The Sky's Forest

The Sky’s Forest is a strong horror, but a dysfunctional sci-fi. It’s a new feature-length genre-based spectacle from writer, director and editor Garrett Schulte which tells a story convoluted in its premise yet quite simple in its execution: after a meteorite containing a hostile entity finds its way to Earth, a group of scientists attempt to retrieve their discovery before realising that they’re being hunted – the question is, can they make their way out of this vast forest in the middle of the night whilst also being prey? When this film began, this critic – being a fan of science-fiction – anticipated that The Sky’s Forest would tap into a love of big concepts merged with creature-of-the-week storytelling efficiency. And whilst the big concepts aspect fails, the creature-of-the-week aspect does not. This is a jumbled piece, with many contrasting positives and negatives.

There is, unfortunately, an issue with the characters here: they’re quite easy to hate. The Bigfoot inspired alien monster, on the other hand, is honestly the hero of the movie. Whilst it is successfully scary as a pursuer, it’s simultaneously adorable, cool to look at, and fun to think about. For throughout the runtime, all I was thinking was, I can sympathise with this thing – you get a pass to rip these people to shreds, I say. You’ve also gotta love the creature’s various powers. For instance, it carries with it a flying red ball of energy which it can retreat into and deflect any attacks. It’s also telepathic, utilising a deep, spooky voice to threaten and torment. All of this is ridiculously cool and demonstrates a level of creative personality and inventiveness on the part of the filmmaker.

But as I say, part of the problem is that the humans are gun-wielding idiots who never react normally to a person being shot. The film is almost nihilistic in how it depicts their foolish behaviour and constant self-destruction; for instance, we quickly establish that guns do not affect the creature, and yet these trigger-happy cowboys continue to accidentally shoot one another. One could argue that this characteristic makes the picture more thematically resonant as being about American culture – i.e. Trump-era militarism bleeding into pursuits of discovery.

On a technical level, some short-comings include the sound recording which is frequently muffled – although the sound design itself, and use of score, is impeccably suspenseful. The colour grade during the daylight scenes is oversaturated; however, for interior and nighttime sequences it is nicely balanced. Speaking of nighttime sequences, this is a phenomenally well-lit film from a practical point of view – a stroke of genius is getting the characters to use glow-sticks, so nothing ever feels artificially bright; there’s an in-world reason, and the background is genuinely pitch-black which is terrifying on a story level.

Ultimately, it is an entertaining genre film with a boring first act but a riveting central portion. The technical departments offer peaks and valleys, but ultimately it is indeed watchable. This critic’s main takeaway is how cool that damn alien is – would love to get a beer with them at some point.