fuji_jukai.mov (2016) (Japan)

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A team doing a report on the disturbing amount of suicides that take place within a beautiful forest under the shadow of Mt. Fuji come across a discarded cellphone. The footage from said phone is edited together with eyewitness accounts to present a full length feature. Teenage Ami journeys out to the Aokigahara Forest, planning to take her own life. A truly gorgeous location to put an end to the unfathomable sadness that some people cannot escape from. Two other teenage girls, Mi-tan and Hinata, join her after she invites anyone who is curious to come and see her take her own life. The whole plan being for them to upload her final footage for her. Mi-tan seems a bit excited (and slightly insane) and Hinata has a real quiet sociopath vibe to her but I think Ami is just content she won’t be alone in her final moments. The three girls trek through the woods, getting to know each other and building a dynamic that just feels off. Well, obviously because all of them are there for pretty awful reasons on the awful reasons spectrum. The deeper they travel into the vast ocean of trees, the more things begin to feel off, besides the natural offness you would expect to find in a place so beautiful yet soaked in that much sadness. Eventually, the inevitability sinks in and something it begins to feel like there’s a purposefully obscure layer running just out of grip behind this trek in the woods. The discovery of a corpse destroys some confidence and curiosity takes a backseat to fear. It also causes the girls to flee from their path, which sucks when there’s so much woods to get lost in. Night falls, a village deep in the forest is stumbled across and the truth comes out. The main crux of the footage is shot on iPhone and it works pretty well, interviews with locals and people familiar with the location add a nice bit of backstory to things that our main characters couldn’t have offered up without feeling completely out of place. It builds a solid atmosphere to the slow-burning dread and hits a few disturbing notes… that livestream moment is a fucking cringe-inducing heart punch. The film offers up a lot more than expected at 84 minutes but it also drags as it lulls in some spots. Thankfully the setting is a major advantage and makes it a bit easier to look past a plot that can’t really fill the runtime and is plenty familiar. It also doesn’t fumble the ending which is a worry that comes along with all found footage and mockumentaries.