15 Most Controversial Movie Moments 2016

Not only was director Jason Zada’s feature debut The Forest one of the worst horror movies of the year, it was also accused of being culturally insensitive alongside awful. Starring Natalie Dormer as a woman looking for her missing twin sister (also played by Dormer and distinguished only by different hair colour) in Japan, the film is set mostly in the Aokigahara Forest – a dense and sprawling forest at the base of Mount Fuji where as many as 100 people commit suicide every year.

Of course, this is horror movie territory and any means of death is fair game be it suicide, cannibalism or just your average, run of the mill stabbing murder. But critics of the movie have pointed out that to set it in the very real Aokigahara Forest is needlessly insensitive to those who took their lives there and their families. Adding insult to injury, The Forest’s focus is on a white cast terrorised by folkloric demons and barely touches on the relation between its setting and Japan’s high suicide rates.

Again, this is horror territory and the movie probably shouldn’t be expected to explore anything so deep as the root cause of suicide, but Zada and Co could’ve easily exercised some sympathy for Aokigahara Forest’s victims by transferring the plotline to a fictional forest and avoided some of the flak too.