Trailer analysis: The forest (2016)

The forest is directed by ‘Jason Zada’, who mostly directs indie films. Zada is mostly known for directing ‘The Houses October Built’ and ‘Take this lollopop’, which are both indie horror films. The forest had a budget of $10 million, which tells us that the film is independent because the budget has to be over $10 million to be labelled as a mainstream film. The companies that distributed this film are not conglomerate companies; they are all indie companies, who are not so well known internationally. The companies that distributed ‘The forest’ are ‘Gramercy pictures’, ‘Lava Bear’ and ‘AL film’.

This film’s genre is a hybrid of horror and mystery, like every other horror genre trailer this one also starts with a long shot of a house, with a very dark lighting. This scene can connote two things: the first, to signify darkness because it has been shot at midnight and the other, is family. From the beginning, non-diegetic sound has been used as a narrator to tell the story, which is also used as a sound bridge to put together different scenes. Not only that, the background music is being played throughout the whole trailer to make the audience mesmerise and get their full attention. This plays a huge role of making people jump during the important part of the trailer. Diegetic sound is also used such as the creaking sound of the door, this gives a further eeriness to the scene making the audience expect something to happen. The background sound changes depending on the scene. When the text appears in the scene, they tend to have a voice saying the protagonists name ‘Sara’. This repeats over and over again to foreshadow that someone might be waiting for her in ‘the forest’. When the forest was shown, they added an animalistic sound of a wild animal to show the forest is a dangerous place. Furthermore, the trailer’s background music has a lower level of volume, when something is going to pop up and following that a booming sound is added. This is done to emphasise the creature/sprit and make the audience experience from the same fear as the protagonist. Also, dialogue from the guard is used to show how deadly the forest is, when he emphasises while saying ‘Do not leave the path’.

Mise-en-scene is one of the most important elements of making the film possess the eerie atmosphere. The setting is mostly based in Japan, the Aokigahara forest also called ‘The suicide forest’ that is located at the bottom part of Mount Fuji. The costumes used when the showing the twins look very old fashion, making the audience believe that it took place in the past. Also, since the dress is one piece and looks similar to a hospital gown and their gestures are shown to be awkward making the scene look mysterious. When Sara goes to Japan, not much of the setting is shown as it could contrast with the current atmosphere because the buildings would be shown as bring and lively atmosphere. The trailer contains iconography of a sign that says ‘no entry’ to once again make a reference of all the evilness and the danger within the forest. The gestures and facial expression of the characters are shown to indicate their fear. The trailer also contains some gruesome sense of the antagonist (the sprit) and some dead bodies hanging to give the audience some insight of the movie and to make the target audience feel excited and scared at the same time.

In addition, lighting and editing has been used to make the target audience enjoy the trailer. A variety of editing has been used to make the trailer look interesting. In the beginning mostly slow dissolve was used to portray the serious atmosphere. However, later on cutaways was used to show the stress of the protagonist, which has an effect on the audience by making them feel the character’s emotions. Also, when something bad happens to the protagonist the scene fades to black makes the audience curious of what happened later. Also, the lighting of the scene is dark even when it is taken in day time. This suggests that even light, which connotes to hope is unable to reach inside the forest. When close up to the protagonists face the use of low lighting shows the character’s fear in more detail. Hard front light is used with a long shot of the protagonist running towards the light near the end of the trailer, making the audience feel that there could be some hope and a way to defeat the antagonist. Mostly close up is used to show the important parts of the film, which includes injuries, hands coming from the ground and man’s face at the end to make the audience jump. These scenes are put together as a montage of small clips.