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The Forest by Michaelbrent Collings

Written Insomnia Press, 2020

ISBN: 9798670345958

Availability: paperback, Kindle

The Forest is a bit different from the last few releases by Michaelbrent Collings.  His recent titles (Terminal, Scavenger Hunt, Stranger Still) were combination thriller/horror novels that relied on a fast pace and a lot of action.  The Forest relies less on action, and more on creating an atmosphere of helplessness and dread.  As usual with Michaelbrent’s writing, it’s a mystery also, and any reader will have a very difficult time unraveling the puzzle before the last few pages.  It’s a good plot and a decent read, and parts of it are excellent.   However, it does drag a bit at times and might have been better served by trimming some pages.

Tricia and Alex are the two main characters. They were students at the same school, and later got married.  The whole book revolves around their time interacting with the Forest, a place known to all the kids to be haunted, and of course it contains the proverbial “cabin in the middle of the woods”.

As kids, Tricia and Alex went into the forest to try to rescue their friend Sam from his crazy mother, and they came out having failed to rescue Sam, and with no memory of what happened.  All they know is the Forest is a bad place.  As adults, they drive by the Forest one day, and their only child vanishes into the Forest.  Later, at the advice of their therapist, they re-enter the Forest to face their fears and achieve some closure over what happened to Sam and their kid.  Needless to say, the Forest is NOT kind to visitors, and Tricia and Alex are treated to a kind of dimension-bending hell where time doesn’t exist, entities want to kill them (or save them) and nothing makes any sense.

Although Tricia and Alex are the primary protagonists, the true star of the book is the Forest itself.  Collings does a nice job of making it seem to be a living, breathing entity in its own right.  The use of  never-ending fog, various shapes that appear, and flashing lights do a good job of piling on the spooky atmosphere, and the secondary characters that drop in and out (some offering hints as to the nature of the Forest) only serve to enhance the effect.  Again, this book isn’t written in the usual 100 mph fashion of Collings’s past few novels, it’s more of a grim, spooky atmosphere that relies on vagueness and a fear of the unknown to make its point.  Think the 2016 Naomi Watts film The Forest (no relation to this book) and you’ll get the idea.  When it works, it’s done very well.  The sequence with Trish and Alex going crazy trying to unravel the mystery of the stream that keeps switching flow direction is the best part of the book, and may be one of the best sequences Collings has ever written.

As good as the writing is, there are times when it feels like Collings went just a bit too over the top with the descriptions, and it does slow the book down a bit.  There are times when the reader might find themselves skimming pages a bit, just to get to the next part.  A bit more dialogue and a bit less exposition could have pushed this book to the next level.  It’s still a good read, just a bit of a notch down from his usual work.  Also worth noting is the explanation for the mystery of the Forest may be a bit difficult for some readers to comprehend.  It’s best not to think about it too much, just take it at face value.

Overall, another decent one from one of the most consistent authors out there today.  Recommended.

Contains: violence, limited gore, profanity

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson