Haunted Forest is a 2017 Filipino supernatural horror film directed by Ian Loreños, and starring Jane Oineza, Maris Racal, Jameson Blake and Jon Lucas.[1] It tells the story of a teenager who is forced to leave her life behind when her estranged policeman father is reassigned to the province.[2] The film deals with supernatural mythical creatures, among them is the "sitsit,"[3] a creature that preys on women at night and is believed to be the cause of sudden disappearances and deaths of women in the subject town.[4]
The story revolves around Aris (Raymart Santiago) and his estranged daughter, Nica (Jane Oineza). When Aris was reassigned, he immediately starts on a case investigating a murder which is staged similarly to the death of a childhood friend that haunts him. While her father is away, Nica, her cousin and her local friends went for an outing where she started to get weird things happen to her. She tries to shake it off at first, but it gets worse day after day.
Haunted Forest was produced under Regal Films and is directed by Ian Loreños. Loreños described the direction of the film as a mixture of Regal Film's "usual style" on horror and his own take on the genre. He said that the production team decided to put more "organic horror" elements in the film aside from relying on scaring the audience by surprise while adding that the film had "story" and "lessons". He stated that his film as an all-in-one film being a horror, family story, and love story while making sure the film won't have the impression of being a "mishmash".[7]
Release
An official trailer for Haunted Forest was released by December 4, 2017. The film was premiered in cinemas on December 25, 2017, as one of the eight entries of the 2017 Metro Manila Film Festival.[3]
Reception
On January 4, 2018, Lily Monteverde of Regal Films was satisfied of the box office gross of the film despite describing the then undisclosed figure as "not overwhelming".[8] It was later reported that the film grossed about ₱56 million and was the fourth most sold team during the official run of the 2017 Metro Manila Film Festival.[9]
