By Preston Wilder
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Small thoughtful films like Into the Forest hardly ever play at the Cyprus multiplex (I’m still not sure how this one snuck in) and when they do I hardly ever get to review them, since there’s always something bigger to write about – but my few days in Thessaloniki meant I missed the Hacksaw Ridge previews last week, so here we are. And the film itself? Well, it’s small. It’s thoughtful. It’s pretty good, though the middle third in particular threatens to sink into torpor a few times.
The film divides roughly into three acts, the first one setting out its simple but effective premise: an apocalypse caused not by nuclear war, or even terrorists – though rumours are rife – but an unexplained, apparently worldwide power-cut that lasts for days, then weeks, then months. The second act centres on two sisters, Nell (Ellen Page) and Eva (Evan Rachel Wood) as they face the gradual erosion of modern life, stuck in a remote house in the woods with barely enough fuel – and no good reason – to go into town (the overall vibe recalls Z for Zachariah, another wilderness-set, post-apocalyptic drama with a small cast). Their hands become calloused from wielding a shovel. Luxuries taken for granted – jam, toothpaste – slowly run out. A forgotten chocolate, found in a corner of an old box, is admired like a precious jewel.
The third act starts with a reminder that, as we know from The Walking Dead, people aren’t always very nice once society breaks down – then shifts to a final half-hour that confirms the film as a woman-centric story, made by a female director and starring two compelling young actresses. Evan Rachel Wood has been on the brink of stardom for years now, and may finally have broken out with the TV series Westworld (could that be what’s propelled Into the Forest to the multiplex?); there’s always been something slightly distant about her, her intensity tinged with a certain impatience – one recalls her as Mickey Rourke’s unsympathetic daughter in The Wrestler – and Eva is the less likeable character, a dancer who spends much of the film refusing to let go of her dancer’s discipline. Ellen Page is softer, goofier, more accessible, still playing quick-witted teens a decade after Juno. Any film with her ardent, girlish vibe – a sense of fun sliding into a sense of yearning – will be worth seeing.
Worth seeing, maybe – but where? I hate to say so, but it’s hard to imagine many punters making the trek to the cinema for something as minor as Into the Forest. It has nothing to do with low budget, or not enough plot twists (or special effects). We need more, not fewer, character-based psychological dramas on the big screen – but this particular one doesn’t burrow deep enough, doesn’t make the leap to a world without rules. Early on, there’s talk of “a fugue state”, a kind of amnesiac trance where memories blur – and that’s what the film sorely lacks, that dreamlike sense of identity melting away. It’s there in occasional moments, like a car at night in the deep woods – its headlights forming a tunnel of light as it moves through the blackness – but not enough. Into the Forest needed to go much deeper into the forest, and lose itself there.
Instead we have something like a distaff Robinson Crusoe, with a house in the woods as a desert island. The sisters learn to survive, finding edible plants and picking berries. Once in a while they indulge themselves, swigging from an old bottle of booze or using their last remaining fuel to play music and watch home movies (their family past is another aspect that gets mentioned often without quite connecting). The house looks very clean after a year without washing powder, though, their hair looks well-cut, they haven’t lost weight or fallen ill at any point. None of that would matter if the film were emotionally intense – but it stays on the surface, so the mind goes inevitably to surface detail.
“It’s really sweet of you to do this,” mutters Eva at a particularly fraught moment (saying more would spoil it). “Of course. What else are sisters for?” replies Nell tenderly – and Into the Forest works best in those terms, as a tale of a bond between sisters played by two very watchable actresses. As a small thoughtful film, it works fine. As a story of fear, paranoia and mounting apocalypse, however – social norms collapsing, people in extremis – it’s too gentle and glancing, not really grim enough or bold enough or psychologically twisted enough. As befits a film where the world as we know it breaks down because of no electricity, it lacks power.
DIRECTED BY Patricia Rozema
STARRING Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, Max Minghella
US 2016 101 mins
