An intimate, “cosy catastrophe” story based on Jean Hegland’s best-selling novel, Into the Forest stars Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood as sisters living in a remote, rather lovely and technologically advanced house deep in the titular forest who have to cope with a continent-wide electrical blackout. A house that’s seemingly isolated from dense civilization seems like one of the less interesting locales to set your “collapse of civilization” story in, but the trailer makes it clear there is a small town nearby. The kind where yokels carry shotguns and look extra menacing, and hey, I’m not the type who thinks that every single person should own a gun, but a couple of sisters living in a lavish smart-house in the woods on the outskirts of Yokel-ville should probably have more guns than rooms in their house. And also a bunch of Home Alone traps set up and ready to be sprung on any psycho dude who shows up unannounced. That’s not potential-victim-blaming, that’s potential-crazy-home-invaders-blaming / sister-preparing. ADT and an axe aren’t going to cut it in some places, especially when a lingering power outage strikes North America.
Aside from yokel-threats, the sisters also have to deal with disease, thirst, starvation, and an utter lack of communication with any other parts of the world that might have the facts on what’s happened and what’s to come, which is actually more frightening than yokel-threats, because you can’t shoot hunger or septicemia.
“This is all we have,” Ellen Page says at one point in the trailer.
“We have each other,” Evan Rachel Wood responds. Which sounds to me like she’s planning to kill and eat her sister as soon as it’s convenient. Probably tomorrow morning.
Into the Forest premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. It’s “Coming Soon” to theaters.
