Review of "Into the Forest," DVD version

 Review of

Into the Forest, DVD version

Four out of five stars

Different approach to the apocalypse

 The setting of this movie is the tropical rainforest of the northwestern United States and southwest Canada. A family consisting of a father (Robert) and his two young adult daughters (Nell and Eva) live in a very isolated house in the forest and the father is extremely talented in living in the forest. He cuts a plentiful supply of firewood, is very good in maintaining things and they have a small flock of chickens.

 Suddenly, there is an unexpected, massive and total loss of electrical power. While Robert had solar panels installed, the inverter has not arrived, so they are useless in terms of power generation for the house. They travel to town and discover how widespread the outage is, it appears to be national in scope and while they have battery powered radios, there is no official government information that explains the problem. The viewer never learns why the power went out.  

 When Robert is killed in an accident with a chainsaw, Nell and Eva then must cope with the situation and with each other. They start out with a large stock of food and of course they have eggs from the chickens. However, wild hogs attack and kill the chickens, so they are forced to find food from the land. Fortunately, they have a large library containing books on how to live off the forest.

 What makes this story different from most apocalyptic stories is that there are no mobs of looters roaming about the countryside. Only two men visit their home and they do so separately and only one is dangerous. The timeframe for the power being out extends to nearly two years and two young women alone in an isolated location would have been an easy target.

 Therefore, this story is about how the two young sisters interact and try to cope with a situation that makes no sense and where almost nothing works. Quite unusual and effectively carried out. While they sometimes engage in strong disagreements, they both understand that they are all each other has.

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