Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
HISTORY
5 Films Set in Evergreen Forests
Wild and evergreen all year round. There's a certain thrill to films set in evergreen forests.
By Will Street
Jul. 25, 2019, 11:30 AM
RELATED
Wild, mysterious and riddled with surprises, the forest has been a foreboding and scary place to man through the ages. But what of the films that have captured the darkness and mystery that so markedly characterises the forest. I, Mike Humphries, have explored five of them for you.
Number 5 - The Blair Witch Project
​
A film that founded a subsequent movement of "Found Footage" films such as Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project was shot on CP-16 and Hi8 video cameras and tells the tale of three student filmmakers who hike the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland in 1994 to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. Little did they realise beforehand that the witch was real and it eventually kills them all. In The Blair Witch Project, the forest is a bewildering and bewitching place where the characters lose track of their location and turn to inner strife. Rife with mystery and terror like the Blair Witch, the forest consumes them until at last they are overcome by the witch and fall to a bitter end.
Number 4 - The Duke of Burgundy
​
Set in a timeless idyllic world, the Duke of Burgundy charts the life of two dainty women who pursue their sexual fantasies. One plays the dominatrix while the other the submitter who begs her elder to "be nasty". In a female-centred world where no male characters exist the couple are left to pursue their feminine fantasies. The object of their study is nothing less than the pretty butterfly which typifies the dainty nymph-like character of their world. All in all the timeless forest in which they live and feeling that it is forever summer play a crucial part in creating a tranquil, diaphanous world where the two women can unleash their debauched fantasies.
​
Number 3 - The Revenant
​
Here the forest is something bleak and harsh. Protagonist Hugh Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, guides trappers through unorganised territory when he is attacked by a grizzly bear and, about to be mercy-killed by Tom Hardy's character John Fitzgerald, watches his son be brutally stabbed to death. Left for the dead, the rest of the film charts Glass's journey to find his way back to the trappers pack to bring justice upon Fitzgerald. There a some exquisite shots of the mountains and forest from Oscar winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. In fact the opening battle scene sets the tone for some highly immersive and delightful cinematographic work throughout. Far removed from the idyllic setting of The Duke of Burgundy, the forest is a cold, desolate battle ground for large parts of the film and the place of Glass' long, arduous hardships. Through desperate ingenuity he makes it back alive, I know most of us wouldn't last a second in those environments.
Number 2 - Antichrist
​
A film as disturbing as it is captivating. Director Lars Von Trier continues his perhaps semi strange fetish for feminine sin and charts the tale of an unnamed women, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who retreats to the forest with her husband, who is also unnamed but played by William Dafoe, to recover from the loss of her son. Gainsbourg blames the loss of her child on her inherent evil as a woman and there are some incredibly graphic scenes of her cutting off her clitoris in hatred of her femininity. The forest is aptly named "Eden" and the plot is surrounded by theories of feminine sin and gynocide such as witch-hunts. We can perhaps see in Gainsbourg's proclamation "Nature is Saturn's Church" a reference to Rhea, the Greek goddess of motherhood and the wild, and nature as a symbol of fertility. Altogether, Lars Von Trier combines an exhilarating plot with evocative experimental images to produce a spell-binding cinematic work.
Number 1 - The Witch
​
In a terrifying climax, the winner of our list is the The Witch. Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2015 Sundance film festival, this film is oozing with puritan and historical accounts of Witchcraft from the 17th Century. Having left a New England Church plantation, a family building a farm on the edge of a forest lament the early lose of the baby Samuel who is killed by a witch. Faced with dark, mysterious happenings and the further death of the son, Caleb, the parents William and Katherine accuse the daughter Thomasin and two younger twins of witchcraft. Man is in battle with the foreboding wilderness of the forest which is forbidden to the children and home to the witches, whose dark arts are envisaged in evocative scenes and seething with fear through eery, bellowing sounds. A work that blends historical accuracy with cinematic fear, this film is sure to make you avoid walking through a forest alone at night for some time to come.