825 Forest Road, directed by Stephen Cognetti of Hell House LLC fame, is a film that knows what it is, which is a modest indie horror flick trying to punch above its weight, and it actually manages to land a few good hits.
The story kicks off with Chuck, a high school music teacher, who movies to a small town called Ashland Falls with his wife and his sister Isabel. It’s a fresh start for the trio, though that freshness is tainted pretty quickly.
Isabel is still reeling from their mother’s recent death in a car crash, which she blames herself for, and that guilt isn’t just a background detail, as it’s the emotional backbone of the movie, for better or worse, and when Chuck meets a neighbor, they drop the most unsubtle red flag ever: “People like Isabel don’t do well in Ashland Falls.”
Turns out, the town is cursed, or at least haunted by the lingering presence of a ghost named Helen Foster, who died in the 1940s, and ever since, she’s been driving people to the brink of madness, and no one knows where her house is anymore because the town changed all the street names, which sounds dumb until you realize it’s kind of genius.
That’s the central mystery, and while it sounds a bit hokey, the film handles it with enough sincerity that you want to see where it leads.
This is where the movie starts threading heavier themes into the mix, you know the usual grief, guilt, trauma and mental health, like a lot of horror films do these days, and to its credit, it doesn’t treat those ideas like horror window dressing.
It takes them seriously, but maybe too seriously, as for stretches of the film, it slows everything down to explore Isabel’s psychological state or Chuck’s increasing frustration as he hits dead ends, and if you’re not fully invested in the characters, it can drag.
There are moments that feel more like therapy sessions than horror scenes, and while that adds depth, it can make the pacing feel sluggish, and you keep waiting for the horror to hit again, and while I personally didn't mind it, I think a lot of people will have an issue with that when watching the film, but I might be wrong.
But anyway, when it does hit, it’s not with a bang, but more with a whisper, and if you're looking for lots of jump scares, you won't find many here here. Instead, the fear creeps in through shadowy corners and moments that don’t immediately register until they start to linger in your brain.
It’s the kind of dread that builds slowly, that quiet unease that makes you look twice at a hallway or question whether you really saw something move in the background, and it’s very much in the vein of Hell House LLC in that aspect, with that same homemade charm and raw tension, even if it doesn’t quite reach those same heights.
The acting’s also bit rocky at first, and a few awkward line deliveries, but as the film progresses, the performances settle in, and there’s a certain natural awkwardness to the cast that actually works in the movie’s favor, as it makes everything feel a bit more grounded.
On a technical level, though, 825 Forest Road looks better than it probably had any right to, and the cinematography is clean and purposeful, with some well-composed shots that make the most of the small-town setting.
The lighting’s moody without being murky, and the production design gives the sense that people actually live in these spaces. There’s even an attempt at nonlinear storytelling, with shifting perspectives between characters, flashing back to key moments, and while it doesn’t quite deepen the mystery, it adds a nice rhythm to the narrative.
825 Forest Road is a film with a lot of heart, and while it is slow which will bother some people, and occasionally frustrating in how deliberately it withholds information, but if you’re into horror that simmers instead of screams, and leans into character and atmosphere over blood and shocks, then there’s something here worth your time.
It’s a film that makes you lean in, even when you’re not sure where it’s going, and while it’s flawed, no doubt, it’s also thoughtful, and even though I got enough out of it and thought it was decent enough overall, I understand the criticisms fully, too.