825 FOREST ROAD (2025)

Studio:   Shudder
Director: Stephen Cognetti
Writer:   Stephen Cognetti
Producer: Joe Bandelli, Dana Guerin, Cindi Rice
Stars:    Elizabeth Vermilyea, Kathryn Miller, Joe Falcone

Review Score:

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Summary:

A man moves to a sleepy suburb with his wife and sister only to discover the town hides a dark history of being haunted by a ghostly woman who drives residents to suicide.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Over a video call, college student Ashley Stork and her friend Natalie discuss their research into urban legends concerning their haunted hometown of Ashland Falls. Ashley becomes alarmed by loud knocks on her bedroom door, which she repeatedly opens to find no one there. An unseen presence then terrifies Ashley.

CHAPTER ONE – CHUCK

Music teacher Chuck Wilson and his dressmaker wife Maria move into a house in Ashland Falls with Chuck’s sister Isabel, who will be attending the nearby university on an art scholarship while still struggling with the recent death of her and Chuck’s mother in a car accident Isabel blames herself for. Shortly after unpacking, Chuck calls his realtor Bonnie Davis to report a leaking roof, which the previous homeowner claimed was new.

While investigating the leak from outside, Chuck meets his neighbor Larry. When Chuck mentions seeking recourse for the roof from the previous owner, Larry surprises Chuck by revealing the house’s previous owner committed suicide. Chuck later sees a shotgun on the floor of his wife’s studio in a photo taken of the water damage.

Chuck and Maria become perplexed when Maria’s old dressing mannequin, nicknamed “Martha,” inexplicably appears on the lawn. Larry joins Chuck when he goes outside to gather Martha. In asking after Isabel’s mental wellbeing, Larry claims the town is home to several suicidal people dealing with depression. Larry also makes cryptic references to “she” and “her,” but in response to Chuck’s follow-up questions, Larry only tells Chuck to read up on the town’s history and to look into a social group called “Friends of Gardening.”

At the local library, Chuck notices a pile of unattended books in one of the aisles. Chuck also has a brief encounter with Ashley. In a tearful state of distress, Ashley warns Chuck to put back the books he collected about Ashland Falls and to leave town immediately.

When Chuck checks out the books, the librarian, Molly, asks him if he is looking for Forest Road. Chuck tells Molly and a library clerk about Ashley, and about the pile of books, which causes Molly and the clerk to look at each other with concern. On his way out, Chuck sees a bulletin board flyer for a ”Friends of Gardening” meeting.

Chuck brings home the books to begin reading about Ashland Falls. Chuck reads an entry about a tragedy that occurred at a town council meeting in 1980. Chuck also learns that in 1953, the town renamed all of the streets and redrew the borders. Chuck discovers his address used to be 15 Rose Lane.

Chuck’s student Olivia comes to the house for a piano lesson. After he steps out of the room, Chuck hears someone else playing the piano. Before hurrying out of the house, Olivia tells Chuck about a mysterious woman who suddenly appeared beside her.

Chuck attends the “Friends of Gardening” meeting, which turns out to be a secret gathering of concerned townspeople including Larry and Molly. Led by Terrance, the group also includes fellow residents Carl and Thomas. Everyone discusses how strange events recently restarted following Ashley’s unexpected suicide, and how all of them either lost a loved one to suicide or have been haunted in another way by a ghostly woman.

The group finally reveals to Chuck that the mysterious “her” they cryptically reference is Helen Foster, who has been inflicting pain on Ashland Falls for decades. Their gathering meets in secret and doesn’t speak Helen’s name because the town fears perpetuating her myth. The group adds that Helen’s curse can supposedly be stopped if they can find and destroy 825 Forest Road, which is believed to be the address where Helen was living when she killed herself in the 1940s. The meeting gets cut short after Larry sees a brief vision of Helen. Chuck experiences a second Helen sighting on his way out.

CHAPTER TWO – ISABEL

In her bedroom, Chuck checks on Isabel to ask about her ongoing therapy for dealing with their dead mother and the troubling nightmares she has been experiencing. Chuck notices several sketches of an old house that Isabel doesn’t remember drawing. Despite Maria’s suspicions, Isabel insists she had nothing to do with moving her mannequin.

Upon his return home from the “Friends of Gardening” meeting, Isabel tells Chuck that a girl at her school named Ashley killed herself the previous night. Isabel also confesses that strange things have been happening, and she cannot be sure what is real and what is imaginary. Chuck asks if Isabel has suicidal thoughts after she mentions a friend from school named Luke told her the town can have an unsettling effect on people. Chuck advises Isabel to continue therapy and to stop blaming herself for the car accident that killed their mother.

Luke visits the house. He and Isabel discuss various rumors regarding the town’s haunting, including one about a man who hanged himself by standing on a stack of books in the library. Luke claims everything ties back to Helen Foster, whose daughter Mary was bullied into suicide. Helen killed the bully and their parents before killing herself with a shotgun in the home at 825 Forest Road. Luke explains the address cannot be found because maps from Helen’s era were sealed under court order. When the town council met in 1980 to discuss unsealing the records, witnesses reported seeing the council locked inside a room with a woman who looked like Helen before they were all killed.

Isabel and Maria attend an art gallery show together. Relating to Isabel’s strained relationship with her brother, Maria reveals her bipolar disorder has caused some stress with her own sister as well as Chuck. The gallery closes suddenly when a dark figure appears in one of the paintings.

Isabel tells Luke she wants to find Forest Road so she can make her recurring nightmares of a frightening woman stop. Luke warns that Ashley was trying to find the same location right before she killed herself.

Chuck summons Isabel back to the house to stay with Maria, who experienced a scare, while he goes out, which Isabel suspects is to look for Helen Foster’s home. Before leaving, Chuck tells Isabel to pack in preparation for moving out of the house.

Luke returns to the house. Upon seeing a picture of Isabel’s mother in her bedroom, Luke mentions she is the same woman who greeted him at the front door. Isbael explains that is impossible because her mother died several months ago. With both of them confused and frightened, Luke leaves abruptly.

After hearing a taunting voice purporting to be Isabel’s mother, Isabel and Maria flee from a frightening figure to find they are locked inside the house. Isabel rushes upstairs to hide in her bedroom. Outside her door, Isabel hears Maria scream.

CHAPTER THREE – MARIA

Maria experiences several odd occurrences such as the repeated appearance of stacked dishes in the kitchen and her mannequin Martha moving on its own. During a livestreamed dressmaking tutorial, viewers including Maria’s sister Allison see Martha move. Following another frightful encounter with the mannequin, Maria and Chuck burn it in a barrel outside.

During Helen’s appearance while she and Isabel are left home alone, Helen’s specter attacks Maria. Afterward, Isabel points out that Maria’s bleeding face now has a ghostly appearance.

CHAPTER FOUR – FOREST ROAD

Luke returns once more to show Chuck and Isabel how, prior to her death, Ashley figured out Forest Road could be found using old power grid maps, which the town neglected to account for. On the grid map, the three of them follow power grid lines to a forest location, which they speculate to be 825 Forest Road, that no longer appears on the town map.

Bonnie the realtor comes to the house with her videographer Julian to record a testimonial for her business. With Chuck now indisposed, Maria agrees to take his place for the interview despite being in recovery from Helen’s attack. Isabel asks Luke to stay behind with Maria while she and her brother head out to search for Forest Road.

Chuck and Isabel find an old house in remote woods. Underneath floorboards, Chuck recovers a collection of letters written by Helen Foster that appealed to the parents of her daughter’s bully, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Clarke, to stop their child from harassing her daughter. From the addresses on the envelopes, Chuck realizes 15 Rose Lane where he now lives was actually Helen’s home and the Clarkes were the family who lived at 825 Forest Road.

While Maria gives her on-camera interview at the same time, she begins speaking as Helen as she describes how the town’s inaction against her daughter’s suffering at school drove her to commit murder. Maria ultimately transforms into Helen before suddenly and violently attacking Bonnie, Julian, and then Luke.

Upon learning the truth about the addresses, Chuck hurries upstairs in 825 Forest Road to collect his sister. Chuck finds Isabel standing in fright in a doorway. Recalling the sketches she previously drew that eerily mirror what is currently happening, Isabel tearfully apologizes to her brother. A black hand reaches out to grab Isabel. Chuck rushes to rescue his sister, but they both become locked inside a room with the frightening figure.

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Review:

Although they’re grouped together with the same letter, not all B-movies are created equal. Under that umbrella term for genre films exists several levels of horror, sci-fi, and midnight movie fare, with lines usually drawn by production quality, which in turn is often dictated by budget.

Big studio titles, the ones with at least six zeroes in their bank accounts, take over the top penthouse suite. Below that would be Syfy Channel or lower-end streaming service MOWs that maybe cater to a niche audience for a dormant franchise or feature one recognizable, but past-their-prime actor because that’s all they could afford. All the way in the cellar lurk the slapdash slasher, ho-hum haunted house, and “found footage” flicks shot on a phone in three days with a first-time filmmaker’s father and four friends accounting for the entire cast and crew.

About a tier or two above that bottom floor is where “825 Forest Road” rents a room. This is a safer space where homegrown horror movies still don’t include familiar faces in front of the camera, fancy special effects, or perhaps the smoothest storytelling, but they compensate with ample atmosphere, respectable craftwork, and earnest intent you won’t find in VOD vomit with the words “Amityville,” “Shark,” or “Fill-in-the-Blank-nado” in their names. Here sits the sandbox where serious indie horror creators like The Adams Family, Perry Blackshear, and pre-breakout Mike Flanagan come to play and experiment.

Now that we’ve formed a picture of its presentation, let’s summarize “825 Forest Road’s” setup. Music teacher Chuck Wilson just moved to the sleepy small town of Ashland Falls with his wife Maria and his college-aged sister Isabel, the latter of whom struggles with the recent death of her mother in a car accident she blames herself for. Upon meeting his new neighbor Larry, Chuck learns depressed people like Isabel don’t do well in Ashland Falls. The town has a dark, hidden history involving a ghostly woman known to drive spiraling minds to suicide.

Sensitive viewers would do well to heed a trigger warning here. “825 Forest Road” heavily anchors its story in deep-sea sands of trauma and fatal self-harm. These themes rub both ways. The focus on mental health troubles gives context to the characters and their motivations, though it can also create dour slow spots burdened by lengthy conversations concerning therapy and personal pain. Attention spans not locked into the subtext will be prone to wander whenever the movie isn’t directly dealing with hauntings and horror.

The backstory’s buildup can also be frustrating because so much of the initial mystery comes from characters being unnecessarily cryptic. Chuck has to wait a while to learn the dead woman haunting Ashland Falls is named Helen Foster because residents only refer to “her” and “she” without following up to specify exactly who they mean. Another person advises Chuck, “Don’t do it" without clarifying what “it” is. In another circumstance, two librarians merely shoot each other knowing looks when they could simply warn Chuck outright that Helen has harangued the town since vengeful acts ended in death by her own hand in the 1940s. Helen’s demise wasn’t the last anyone would see of her, however. She’s kept Ashland Falls cursed for years. The town believes the only way to stop her is to destroy Helen’s former home, thought to be located at 825 Forest Road. Seems simple enough, except the town council renamed the streets and redrew the borders decades ago, so no one knows where that address is.

Creeps come predominantly from suggestive dread, or from sudden spooks that don’t end in a pouncing payoff, such as fleeting figures only the audience sees appearing behind someone onscreen. While the intensity doesn’t smolder quite as hot, writer/director Stephen Cognetti of “Hell House LLC” fame infuses “825 Forest Road” with eerie indie energy akin to films from those names mentioned earlier. To be clear, “825 Forest Road” doesn’t necessarily have the surreal, supernatural feel of an Adams Family or Mike Flanagan movie. Rather, it boasts a similar grassroots guerrilla style in its minimalist mood that conveys a professional effort, just without the higher-level polish of a Hollywood production. Putting it another way, think of “825 Forest Road” like real, regional horror rather than another throwaway thriller destined for a DTV dumpster.

Acting can be stiff, particularly by one of the members of the main trio, who appears to be “acting” as opposed to seamlessly inhabiting an alter ego. I wonder if the movie might have been shot sequentially, because the cast seems to melt more comfortably into their roles as the minutes move on. However, there’s a hiccup to this flow, which will be mentioned in a moment, that can bring these bumps back.

Blocking can sometimes be stiff too, like a sequence where an actor walks into frame, hits their mark, and tilts up their head to look at an ominous house. Another shot where multiple characters stand in a noticeable line so they can be perfectly positioned in frame smacks of deliberate staging to the detriment of feeling organic.

But “825 Forest Road” looks good for this grade of B-movie. Rooms are furnished to looked lived in. You can see the camera move cleanly on a dolly. The narrative even tries some intriguing tricks like separating the story into nonlinear acts centered on different characters. The alternating perspectives don’t add much to the mystery, as the movie isn’t constructed to reveal big secrets that way. In one scene, you might hear someone ask about something. When that point in time gets revisited later, you’ll see what it was they were asking about and why. This conceit isn’t a whole lot, but it’s something to give the film an atypical rhythm that differentiates it from a pack of poorer peers.

Dismissive viewers are likely to see the cast of unknowns and white glow of the digital medium, hit one of several dialogue-heavy lulls, and hastily conclude “825 Forest Road” is another lo-fi log for the “forget it” fire. Too bad for them. The film is a solid 7/10 for those who appreciate the slow burn of psychological suspense, and is recommended for fans of movies made by indie artists who put sincere commitment into personal projects.

Review Score: 70

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