Watches
July 25, 2021
Shimizu's recent films all suffer from the same thing: they are way too long. Suicide Forest Village is a pretty simple horror flock that shouldn't need to run past the 90-minute mark, but because the intro is excessively long and Shimizu wastes quite a bit of time on inconsequential drama, the film runs almost 120 minutes.
Hibiki and Mei are sisters with a dark past. Mei has been able to leave that past behind, Hibiki turned out to be an introverted girl who has trouble adapting to the world around her. When she finds an odd box below their house, connected to Fuji's suicide forest, strange things start to happen to Hibiki and her friends.
The finale is pretty spectacular, a fine mix of horror and fantasy elements, it just takes a long time before it actually starts. Performances are decent, and the setting is very atmospheric. Sadly, the drama is rather bland, and the first 90 minutes are pretty by the numbers. Shimizu can do better, if only he could bring his films back to 90 minutes.