825 Forest Road (2025)
April 8, 2025 7:52 PM - Subscribe
After a family tragedy, Chuck Wilson hopes to start a new life in Ashland Falls with his wife Maria and little sister Isabel, but he quickly discovers that the town has a dark history of being haunted by a ghostly woman who drives residents to suicide.
Currently streaming on Shudder.
I was tentatively excited for this since it's by Stephen Cognetti, the same writer/director as "Hell House LLC," which is an effective, creepy little found-footage ride I really liked. Halfway through watching this one, though, I remembered Cognetti also made two awful sequels to my fave and I don't think his process has improved. I found this movie similarly disappointing.
The good: Decent acting, obviously some budget spent, creepy-ass mannequin* and several effective scares.
The bad: The story. Oh, the story. Such a disjointed mess.
The one sort of unique thing I liked about the lore was how the whole town knows about the spooky goings on, and the ghost can/will affect anyone and everyone. It's not just "the one family in the one bad house," no--people have been driven to suicide all over town through the years, and there's a sort of underground community around tracking the haunting. That's a neat idea, and extra horrifying if the ghost isn't confined to one place. Too bad it got forgotten about a third of the way through and went back to "nah, the one family in the one bad house."
*Much like in "Hell House LLC" there's a creepy, haunted mannequin, but here it makes zero sense why these people would own SUCH a damn creepy mannequin in the first place. Suspending my disbelief about that, at least it was used effectively...at first. But in "Hell House LLC" basically all of my mounting dread came from the awful clown mannequins appearing and disappearing and just...standing there in the dark. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for them to move and they...never did. (Or did they?) Really effective (read: nightmare-inducing) for me. The mannequin in this movie, I'm sorry to say, definitely moves.
I was tentatively excited for this since it's by Stephen Cognetti, the same writer/director as "Hell House LLC," which is an effective, creepy little found-footage ride I really liked. Halfway through watching this one, though, I remembered Cognetti also made two awful sequels to my fave and I don't think his process has improved. I found this movie similarly disappointing.
The good: Decent acting, obviously some budget spent, creepy-ass mannequin* and several effective scares.
The bad: The story. Oh, the story. Such a disjointed mess.
The one sort of unique thing I liked about the lore was how the whole town knows about the spooky goings on, and the ghost can/will affect anyone and everyone. It's not just "the one family in the one bad house," no--people have been driven to suicide all over town through the years, and there's a sort of underground community around tracking the haunting. That's a neat idea, and extra horrifying if the ghost isn't confined to one place. Too bad it got forgotten about a third of the way through and went back to "nah, the one family in the one bad house."
*Much like in "Hell House LLC" there's a creepy, haunted mannequin, but here it makes zero sense why these people would own SUCH a damn creepy mannequin in the first place. Suspending my disbelief about that, at least it was used effectively...at first. But in "Hell House LLC" basically all of my mounting dread came from the awful clown mannequins appearing and disappearing and just...standing there in the dark. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for them to move and they...never did. (Or did they?) Really effective (read: nightmare-inducing) for me. The mannequin in this movie, I'm sorry to say, definitely moves.
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The cursed town aspect should definitely have been focused on more, but I think the 'different acts/chapters for each character' got in the way there, and for no real payoff - it just wastes time.
posted by destructive cactus at 6:54 AM on April 10