825 Forest Road: An Intriguing Mess

The good, the bad, and the creepy from the new film by the director of Hell House LLC

I recently watched 825 Forest Road on Shudder (maybe they should sponsor me? I’ve been talking them up recently. They’ve got to do SOMETHING with that sweet price increase money), which was by the same director who did the Hell House LLC movies, one of my fave horror franchises.

I have notes.

825 Forest Road: Missed potential, still worth your while

***This section is spoiler free! I have included a section with spoilers below for those who have seen it or don’t care about being spoiled.***

825 Forest Road follows a college freshman, Isabelle, who moves in with her brother, Chuck, and his wife, Maria, after her mother dies in an accident. Unbeknownst to them, the town they move to is besieged by an angry spirit, Helen Foster, out to seek revenge for the death of her daughter. The town has a high rate of suicide, which they attribute to Helen. It’s commonly accepted that Helen’s power lies in her home, 825 Forest Road. If destroyed, her reign over the town would come to an end.

There’s only one problem: no one knows where it is. Finding 825 Forest Road is a localized version of finding the holy grail or the ark of the covenant, and the town is divided into two groups: those who want to search, and those who don’t want to attract Helen’s ire.

I stayed up late to finish this movie. I rarely watch movies all the way through in one sitting. I’ll watch twenty minutes while on the treadmill here, a half hour before bed there. It generally takes me 2-3 days to finish a movie.

So, yeah. It’s compelling. A lot of letterboxd reviews say it's boring, but I didn’t think so. You know yourself best: do you generally like movies other people call “boring?” Then you’ll probably like this one.

It’s told in “chapters,” each in the POV of one of the main characters, Rashomon-style. I liked this and found it interesting. I like a good non-linear story, but I can see how others might be turned off by that.

The big thing about this movie is that it's directed by Stephen Cognetti, the guy behind the much-loved Hell House LLC franchise. I didn't realize this until the end credits when his name popped up on the screen.

A lot of this movie makes more sense knowing that fact. There's a mannequin that's shoe-horned into the plot, and the best sequences in the movie are done found-footage style and are very reminiscent of the Hell House movies. It's obviously where Cognetti is most comfortable.

This movie does fall short in several respects. The characters make weird choices that don't make logical sense. For one thing, they buy into the legend way too quickly. (I'll talk more about this in the spoiler section.)

There’s also a lot of undue melodrama. In one scene, Isabelle rushes home after Maria had a terrifying experience (like, a get-the-hell-out NOW situation), and Chuck immediately walks towards the door and says, “I’m going out.”

Dude. Don't you think you should explain what the hell is going on? Maybe regroup a little?

But drama must run in the family, because Isabelle looks over her shoulder and says, “Searching for… Helen Foster’s House?”

The only thing missing is the DUN DUN DUN orchestra cue, ya’ll. It’s so over the top. There are tons of moments like that. So many that I found myself thinking is this SUPPOSED to be funny? Were they doing it on purpose? The answer is no, but it often felt like it. Certain parts reminded me of that beat in Scary Movie 3 where Charlie Sheen randomly pulls a bat from off-screen and says, “swing ‘way.”

My final spoiler-free gripe with this movie is they show too much of the entity way too early, and the design is exactly what you expect it to be. Spooky CGI decrepit ghost face worthy of any Blumhouse B movie. It would have been so much better if they didn’t show it at all, or maybe only showed it at the end.

If it sounds like I’m dumping on this movie, it’s because there is. so. much. POTENTIAL here. The premise is captivating and fresh, and the parts where the movie is scary are very effective. The performers do the best they can with the lines and direction they’re given–Elizabeth Vermilyea does an especially spectacular job.

I recommend this movie, especially if you have a soft spot for indie movies that may be a little flawed. If you’re a fan of the Hell House movies, you will love some parts of this and hate others.

Spoilers Start Here

One big problem with this movie is that it’s not very cohesive, as though the creators had a lot of ideas and they couldn’t settle on one or two. There’s a hodgepodge of plot elements, including:

-Isabelle feels guilty because she was driving the car when her mother died

-There’s a lot of art references–Isabelle’s an artist with an art scholarship, Maria owns a crafting business (which is how we get Martha the creepy mannequin), and Helen can insert herself into artwork

-there are several references to mental health–Maria is bipolar and stops taking her pills, Isabelle is depressed after the death of her mother, Helen targets those who are mentally weak. Not to mention that Helen’s daughter died by suicide after being bullied.

-Isabelle and Chuck have beef because Chuck “abandoned” her and her mother when he turned 18 and left home. (I mean… okay. That sounds like a normal thing for a young adult to do. Was the Mom abusive? That would make things make more sense, but it’s never outright stated.)

None of these points come together to form a cohesive whole. The plot would have been stronger if we focused on one or two. There are also a lot of plot conveniences, plot holes, and beats that just don’t make sense:

-It’s unbelievable that 825 Forest Road wasn't found already. It’s common knowledge that the town shrank in the 50s and it likely was outside the current city line. Isabelle and Chuck drove to it, in their car, in a matter of minutes. I guess there’s the possibility that people did find it and subsequently committed suicide. I think that would have been a more interesting story to tell.

-The Ashley side story doesn’t make sense. It’s said multiple times that she found 825 Forest Road, which led to her distressed state and subsequent suicide. Why didn’t she kill herself then? Or get killed by Helen like Isabelle, Chuck, and Maria? Instead we choose to find her disheveled in the library as some kind of Harbinger for Chuck. I literally thought she was a ghost until we learned that she killed herself later.

Also, some parts of the movie just… don’t make sense? After Maria has her encounter with the literal living mannequin, Isabelle rushes home. This is when Chuck abruptly leaves and Isabelle delivers her melodramatic line about searching for Helen Foster’s House. He tells her to pack her bags, and it's somehow immediately understood that she's moving to campus. She also knows what happened to Maria, despite not being told, because when Luke comes over mere minutes later she tells him about it.

Speaking of Luke, how did he have time to find those maps and books when Isabelle had just left him on the street to rush home?

And why was he willing to stay with Maria, who was obviously possessed, when only minutes earlier he was running, terrified, from the house?

Back to the subject of melodrama… there's a neighbor character, Larry, who appears the morning after they move in. The mannequin, nicknamed Martha, has mysteriously moved outside overnight, and Chuck has gone out to

investigate. He says that he thinks Isabelle is playing a bad joke–why wouldn't he think that?--and Larry is like, “Is your sister doing okay? **She** likes those who are vulnerable.”

And the asterisks are palpable, ya’ll. If I was Chuck, I’d be like, who the heck is **she**?

And then Larry turns dramatically, telling Chuck to do some research into the town’s history at the library. Ominously, he says, “Friends of gardening are always welcome.” Which is the first mention of this group, which is not about gardening, but about searching for Helen Foster’s House. But they can’t just say that, because other people in the town disapprove of their search.

But A), no one else is around to hear Chuck talk about this group. The townspeople aren’t psychic. So why can’t we just talk openly.

And B), everyone knows what the Friends of Gardening are actually meeting to discuss. It’s an open secret. So why all the mystery? It’s not like anyone’s going to do anything to stop them.

There’s also this weird scene where Chuck has discovered that the roof leaks. He’s mad because the previous owner claimed the roof was new.

And, I kid you not, Larry looks at Chuck and goes, “But Chuck… the previous owner of the house killed himself three years ago.”

DUN DUN DUN!!

Well, gee, Larry, you little drama queen. Chuck bought the house from someone. I think he was talking about them.

I don't mean to be overly negative. There's a lot of good in this movie. There's this interesting thing that happens a couple times where our characters will be out somewhere in public when someone sights Helen, so the townspeople just calmly evacuate the area. In one of these scenes, which takes place at an art gallery, Helen literally inserts herself into a painting, which the townsfolk quickly cover up.

Helen can physically manifest matter. There's a stack of books in the library that someone used to hang themselves that keeps reappearing–despite those books being removed from the collection. And in another scene Helen turns on a closet light after Isabelle removed the bulb from the socket.

That’s sick as heck. I want to know more about that.

Cognetti seems to understand that relationships between characters are the most important part of any story, including horror stories. The relationship between Chuck and Isabelle is central–there’s tension because Chuck left her and her mother when she was eight and he was eighteen, something that’s brought up multiple times. There’s also a nice bond that forms between Maria and Isabelle, a tenderness that subverts the expectation that Maria would blame and resent Isabelle for upending her life. Cognetti underscores this visually by having large spaces between characters, or framing them at odd angles with each other.

It’s also strange that both Chuck and Isabelle are trying to accomplish the same thing: find 825 Forest Road, but they act like they are at odds. Which I suppose they are. In a better ending to this movie, they would find their power by acting together–truly reuniting after Chuck abandoned Isabelle when she was a child, something she constantly reminds him of.

For a few brief seconds it seems that we are heading in that direction. Chuck and Isabelle, finally working together, find 825 Forest Road–but learn that Helen didn’t actually live there–she lived at 25 Rose Lane, which just so happens to be their house. Because of course it is.

Once again, DUN DUN DUN! Which leads us to the final misstep of this movie: the ending.

Fine. That’s an okay, if predictable, twist. But we’ve spent the entire movie building up the fact that Helen makes people kill themselves. Then why don't Chuck, Isabelle, and Maria die by suicide?

That would be so much more internally consistent. It’s literally right there, the thing we've been alluding to the entire movie.

Instead, we have flashbacks to a painting Isabelle made when she was younger of herself standing in front of a cracked-open door with a hand on her shoulder. This is, of course, what plays out when they actually meet their demise. So, what? She’s psychic? It’s a beat that falls flat and doesn’t connect to the rest of the plot in any meaningful way.

The story tried to link back to the theme of abandonment, with Chuck finally running towards Isabelle rather than away from her. But Isabelle and Chuck and Maria and Luke all die anyway. So what's the message here? In any case, the ending falls flat, connecting neither logically nor emotionally.

That’s it for me on 825 Forest Road! Have you seen it? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

H. H. Duke is a writer, author, and podcaster. Most importantly, she loves horror! Currently, she’s working on a book about a weird cave. OoooOOoo! For scary book recommendations, horror movie reviews, and other spooky things, subscribe to H. is for Horror now - If you dare!

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