{"id":47095,"date":"2025-04-01T01:32:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T05:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=47095"},"modified":"2025-04-01T01:57:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T05:57:24","slug":"825-forest-road-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/01\/825-forest-road-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"825 Forest Road (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Exclusively on Shudder April 4th, 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

A family moves to a small town after a tragedy, only to find themselves in the sights of a vengeful ghost in the new film from Hell House, LLC creator Stephen Cognetti.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The four Hell House, LLC films have become banner films for the (nearly) all-horror streaming platform Shudder. Look at any Reddit or Facebook thread stating \u201cI just got Shudder, what should I check out?\u201d and invariably a large percentage of the responses are \u201cHell House, LLC!\u201d I\u2019ll admit, I\u2019m usually one of said responders.<\/p>\n

Frankly, the landmark series is a handful of the best found footage and\/or haunted house films out there, highly worthy of the praise they\u2019ve received.<\/p>\n

With 825 Forest Road, Stephen Cognetti, the writer-director of those films, returns to Shudder and the haunted house subgenre. However, this time in a standard narrative rather than the found-footage. Overall, Cognetti transfers the skill admirably, although he loses some of the oomph and tension of Hell House, LLC in favor of something more familiar. But even when playing in a well-used sandbox, Cognetti creates a worthy film for Shudder viewers.<\/p>\n

Ashland Falls is a town with a curse. It\u2019s an open secret among residents that Helen Foster (no relation) is among them. Too bad she died eighty years ago. She\u2019s their very own Woman in Black; haunting the area since the loss of a child generations ago, terrorizing the residents, sending them fleeing if she nears; leaving a feeling of loss among the citizens, unsure what to do in her strange infection. Occasionally she even hurts or kills those circling too close to her legend (allowing Cognetti to lean into lore; a strong point of his previous films). Ironic, as those would be the very ones who could lift her encompassing supernaturally heightened grief.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s how grief can be. It can blind us, control us, and cloud our thoughts and actions. In some ways, those grieving don\u2019t want to move past; they want to stay within for various reasons. For the new residents of Ashland Falls, college student Isabelle, her formerly estranged brother Chuck, and his wife Maria are all working through their grief and other issues. Perhaps this is why Helen Foster attaches herself to them, driving the film.<\/p>\n

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Moving from found footage to conventional narrative brings both positives and negatives for 825 Forest Road. Firstly, Cognetti shows he can use what he\u2019s learned in the specific, narrow setups of essentially first-person filmmaking to create effective sequences with wider-view, multi-angle cinematography (shot by David Gordon). Cognetti makes full use of the space, now using pans and cuts to craft scares. As expected, most of the horror is how Helen Foster chooses to do the Woman In Black routine, and she\u2019s used very well; never feeling too overused or repetitive. Cognetti creates a simmering horror of everything always just being a little off. The audience is left off kilter, looking in the negative space for our haunt, with most of the action taking place in the daytime so that Cognetti doesn\u2019t lean on \u201cwhat\u2019s in the shadows?\u201d as a tactic.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the wider scope of the story between these moments is standard. We\u2019ve seen this sort of story too often; we\u2019re waiting for it to move where we know it\u2019s heading, while hoping the convention is broken. Compared to narration of thoughts or talking heads that drive found-footage, the more conversational script is often trite, to-the-point, and repetitive. Fortunately, one seemingly obvious take isn\u2019t taken the way one thinks, but how it\u2019s presented does lead to questions.<\/p>\n

Cognetti doesn\u2019t totally yield to standard narrative devices, even in telling a standard story. He opts to break the film into chapters, each following one of the leads.\u00a0 This approach allows a compelling story building, leaving out enticing \u201cwhat was that abouts?\u201d to be filled in later, and focuses each character to truly know them. While none are particularly deep, but serve well enough with each actor, Kathryn Miller, Joe Falcone, and Elizabeth Vermilyea as the main three, solidly performing. With each perspective returning to a few repeated moments, it\u2019s fascinating to go a little further with every go around. With one of the vantage points using video blogs, Cognetti is given license to return to the found footage style presentation for a few sequences. It\u2019s worth noting these moments are the most effective, showing his skill lies most in this format; even if relying on old tricks such as a creepy mannequin, you\u2019re just waiting to move. But it does work, so that\u2019s good, I guess?\u00a0 A downside to this method is that supporting characters for the chapter vanish from the narrative after the story leaves the character world-building poofing out after exposition.<\/p>\n

While often familiar in story beats, Stephen Cognetti works 825 Forest Road with enough skill to push past and create a scary-enough tale. Weaker than the Hell House, LLC series, 825 Forest Road is still worthy of horror-lover\u2019s time even if they\u2019ve seen much of it before.<\/p>\n

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Exclusively on Shudder April 4th, 2025 A family moves to a small town after a tragedy, only to find themselves in the sights of a vengeful ghost in the new film from Hell House, LLC creator Stephen Cognetti.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[477,1008],"class_list":["post-47095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-horror","tag-supernatural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47096,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47095\/revisions\/47096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}