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Exclusive Interview: Director of ‘The Forest’, Jason Zada

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

The Forest arrives in cinemas from Friday and hopes to be the first film this year to scare us all senseless. Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay actor Natalie Dormer heads the dark and sinister tale of a woman searching for her missing twin sister.

The story is set in Japan’s Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mount Fuji, known as a popular destination for the suicidal. Dormer plays level-headed Sara who embarks on a frantic search through the Aokigahara to find her emotionally unstable twin Jess (also played by Dormer). As the journey progresses Sara finds herself alone and paranoid as she starts being plagued by all manor of visions.

Ahead of the film’s release we sat down with Director Jason Zada to discuss The Forest, how he found his visit to the real-life Aokigahara Forest, as well as what it was like directing the Game of Thrones beauty.

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

There’s always a rule in horror films that gets broken, what’s the rule in The Forest and why does it get broken?

Oh man, that’s a big question, she breaks pretty much every rule (laughs). The number one rule is ‘don’t go off the path’ and she goes off of the path very quickly. It’s interesting because there is this, when we were developing the script there was this idea of ‘what would a normal person do in this situation?’ When you know that a twin of yours is missing inside of a forest and you know for a fact that because you have a connection to them that they are still alive, how far would you go to potentially look for them when everybody’s told you they’re most probably dead. It’s one of those things that if you could put yourself in that situation and understand that if it was your child, if it was your sibling, if it was your parent, if it was somebody very close to you and you knew absolutely in your core that that person is still alive, what would you do to try to find them?

The horror genre has been around for decades, how hard is it to add something fresh to the genre?

I think it’s pretty hard, that’s why most movies are set in a house and its haunted. I think what’s interesting about The Forest is that the location plays a pretty massive role in the draw of the film. The forest is based on an actual forest in Japan and that’s sort of the bad guy of the film, and that’s what to me hopefully feels fresh.

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

You visited the real Aokigahara Forest, how did you find that experience?

Well there’s two parts of the forest, the first part is and most of the forest, has paths and trails and is a national park. It’s beautiful. Families go there with their children and they walk around and its gorgeous. The Forest sort of springs off of lava rock from Mount Fuji so all the trees are fighting their way for soil and anything in order to survive. The environment is very interesting and different, and then there’s this little path that goes off into a darker corner of it. It has a bunch of signs and says ‘do not go this way, your life is very precious.’ Once you go over that little piece of ‘do not enter’, basically we modelled the ones that Sara goes past in the film exactly after [the real signs]. Its just a small little chain, once you go over that I think the tone of the forest changes. It’s probably psychological but its darker, its creepier and once you start to see these little ribbons that were tied onto trees and you go off into the woods and start to see dozens of them you start to think that they potentially go off to dead bodies. It really just sends shivers down your spine and you realise this is all very real and sad.

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

We spoke to Natalie who said she ventured off of the path, did you?

Oh yeah. I got to do it about six months before we started shooting and she had the pleasure of doing it when we were in Japan about to start filming. I definitely went off, I went off right when it was starting to get dark. We hiked around the whole park, we went to the ice caves, and here and there and my guide right as the sun is just dropping and the chill in the air seemed to get a lot colder and we’re starting to hear noises and he just said ‘we gotta go, and we have to go now.’ He has a satellite phone and he was willing to call the authorities if I was not willing to go out of the forest right then and there. By the time we got back to our car it was dark and it was scary. It was definitely scary.

Natalie Dormer The Forest image

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

What was it about Natalie Dormer that made you want to work with her?

I’ve been a massive fan of hers for a while. I followed her through several TV series she did. I think it was right around the time I heard she was doing The Hunger Games where I was really like she’s just one of those immensely talented actresses that I’d yet to see her in a starring role. I felt that she not only deserved that time, but felt that she was the perfect person who could pull of the duality of this character. She has to play two characters of very distinct personalities. She’s just really talented at her craft. She takes it very seriously. She was pretty much at the top of my list, the top of the studios list. It was really my first meeting that I had was with her and I walked away saying ‘yes, she’s Sara.’

These sort of films can be petty intense to film, what did you on set to lighten the mood?

I definitely had to be conscious of the fact that Natalie was in 99 point 8 or 9 percent of the film, on every frame. So as an actress and an actor she’s working constantly, didn’t have a lot of down time. A lot of it was psychological, screaming and crying at some point, I really had to make sure that she was given the right space to be able to do what she did on screen but then also off screen when we yelled cut that there wasn’t as much tension. I like to keep things quite light, we played practical jokes on people. I think from a working perspective, making sure she could deliver the performance that we needed and give her that space was important.

Forest BTS

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

What were your inspirations behind The Forest?

I’ve always been a fan of The Shining. I think its just one of those films that you…any time you watch a character psychologically unravel on screen, I think its one of the near perfect case studies in my opinion. It was always something that was there in the back of my mind and I think in the back of all of our minds because its just one of those few films where you really get to watch a character mentally just go off the rails. Through the process of The Forest the whole film is told through Sara’s perspective. We have to watch her unravel as well.

There seem to be a trend of setting scary films in woods recently, such as Cub & The Hallow, what is it about trees that makes them so frightening?

It’s funny, I think that anything can be scary if you put it in the right context. The ocean is a fairly safe and beautiful place but when you put Jaws and a picture of a great white shark coming from the bottom up to a swimmer who is tiny at the top, I think that’s frightening.

With the woods I think that there’s something very familiar but also very foreign about them. Anything could be hiding behind trees and anything could be living within there. That’s why there’s these stories about Bigfoot living in the woods. They’re big and they’re massive and they’re hidden to a degree. What could be in there? I think that that allows you to have a bit of an imagination in terms of what could happen in there. I’m sure you’ve done it many times where you’ve walked into any group of woods and not been scared at all, but then there’s those moments where if its a little dark or foggy or its just at night and you’re alone your imagination could play with you as far as what the possibilities are of what could be hiding in those woods. I think that’s what makes it scary, at least for me.

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

Jason Zada Interview for The Forest

Horror films inevitably get sequels, would you be up for a return to The Forest?

We’d have to tell a good story. With all sequels to any movie as long as there’s the desire and drive to make something that was better than the original and improves upon it and takes a different turn story wise then absolutely.

Why should audiences pick The Forest this weekend?

It’s one of those films that I hope when you watch it, that it gets under your skin a little and makes you think.You know what you might have thought to be one way maybe the next day you think ‘well what about this?’ I’ve heard from people that have seen it twice that they’ve gotten more out of it [the second time around]. I wanted to make a film that hopefully you don’t forget about the second you walk out of the theatre.

There’s a lot of films that I think are semi-disposable, you watch them and walk out of the theatre and as you throw your soda away you sort of throwing the film away too. You don’t remember it five minutes later. Hopefully there’s a little bit of something about The Forest that gets under your skin and stays with you. That’s always exciting for me, I enjoy it when a film can do that.

Watch our exclusive interview with Natalie Dormer here

You can head into The Forest yourselves when the film arrives in UK cinemas on Friday 26th February. 

Kat Hughes is a UK born film critic and interviewer who has a passion for horror films. An editor for THN, Kat is also a Rotten Tomatoes Approved Critic. She has bylines with Ghouls Magazine, Arrow Video, Film Stories, Certified Forgotten and FILMHOUNDS and has had essays published in home entertainment releases by Vinegar Syndrome and Second Sight. When not writing about horror, Kat hosts micro podcast Movies with Mummy along with her five-year-old daughter.

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