The Forest of Love: Deep Cut 2020

Joe Murata sits in a quiet restaurant while the misdeeds of a serial killer fill the television screens behind him. He clutches a yearbook from a girls’ school, its photos crossed out in a careful, deliberate pattern, and then leans toward the waiter to claim he’s a screenwriter. He provocatively asks if the person serving him understands what it feels like to kill someone, planting a cold question in the air that foreshadows the tangled web to come.

Two young men, Jay and Fukami, cross paths with another young man, Shin, and bring him to the empty warehouse where they’ve been living. Jay articulates a compelling, unsettling motive: he wants to make movies that explore every facet of criminal behavior, but he wants to do so within the bounds of legality. When Shin reveals he’s a virgin, Jay escorts him to meet a promiscuous girl who will complicate things further. The girl, [Taeko](/actor kyoko-hinami), declines Shin’s advances but introduces him to her high school classmate, Mitsuko, a reclusive girl living under strict parental control. Mitsuko claims she’s also a virgin, though she’s not drawn to Shin. Taeko presses the idea that scars and rough edges are somehow a path to survival.

In a poignant flashback, Mitsuko and Taeko participate in a high school production of Romeo and Juliet. Mitsuko plays Juliet, while Eiko embodies Romeo, as the girls—who have little experience with romance in their all-girls environment—test boundaries and explore affection and desire amid growing turbulence. A car accident kills Eiko, and the play is abruptly canceled. Five of the girls decide to take sleep medication and stand on the edge of the school roof, with Taeko vowing to become a “slut” if she survives. All fall except Mitsuko, who sees a vision of Eiko and chooses not to join them. Taeko lands on a parked car, leaving her with a limp and a scar, which she later has tattooed with the word “Romeo.”

Back in the present, Mitsuko receives a call from Murata, who claims she lent him fifty yen years earlier and now wants to repay the debt because he’s “made it.” They meet in a park, where Murata arrives in a gleaming sports car and professes his attraction to her. Shin, Jay, and Fukami watch and record the moment from a distance, fueling the sense that Murata’s charm masks something far more dangerous. Mitsuko watches the surveillance video with Taeko and quickly recognizes Murata as a con artist—someone who even previously claimed he wanted to marry her sister. Taeko recalls having slept with Murata and witnessing how he seduced her mother. With new resolve, the trio of filmmakers, along with Mitsuko and Taeko, assemble a filming crew to create a movie about Murata’s cons, with Shin stepping into the role of Murata in their project.

Murata then embarks on a dangerous spree of seduction, weaving a trail through Mitsuko, her younger sister Ami, and Taeko, driving Mitsuko toward self-harm as she cuts herself with a yen note. He stages a concert where many of his former victims appear to vie for his attention. The film crew, along with Mitsuko and Taeko, confront Murata, and Mitsuko reluctantly reveals that she sleeps with him, showing the burns and scars he has left behind. Murata boasts that he can help with their film because he’s wealthy, but the money never materializes. Fukami quits and leaves the project, while the remaining members press on.

It eventually becomes clear that Murata has no real money. The film crew dissolves, leaving Jay, Shin, Taeko, and Mitsuko to continue under Murata’s orchestration. He coaches Mitsuko in a pivotal scene in which she is supposed to strangle Jay, and Jay dies as a result. Murata persuades the others to destroy Jay’s remains by dumping them in a lake. Taeko attempts to escape from a boat but is killed by an unseen gunman, cutting short that thread of the plan.

The group then returns to Mitsuko’s home, where Murata uses Mitsuko’s involvement in Jay’s death to blackmail her parents, torturing them on camera to force them to fund the film through a relative. Ami appears to enjoy the torture of Mitsuko’s parents, and Mitsuko contemplates suicide after watching Ami engage in a sexual encounter with Murata. Murata, Ami, and Shin declare that “tomorrow will be Mitsuko’s death scene.” Mitsuko and Ami go dress shopping for the final scene, but Ami sabotages an escape attempt; she is electrocuted, and Mitsuko suffers a miscarriage and is hospitalized as a result.

The relative finally discovers that the film company is a sham and arrives to demand his money back. Inside the house, Mitsuko’s parents are drunk and furious, and Murata and Shin return to find Mitsuko’s father has hanged himself. Her mother and the relative lie on the floor with a bloody knife nearby. Ami returns home to find Murata and Shin have dismembered the relative. She decapitates her father and discovers her mother is still alive; at her mother’s request, Ami ends her mother’s life.

Murata, Shin, and Ami spirit Mitsuko away to a forest, where she agrees to be killed. She explains that she did not take the sleep medication and had hoped Taeko would die; she had known Murata was a con artist and that Shin was a killer, yet she wished for them to eliminate Ami, her parents, and Taeko. In the ensuing confrontation, Shin shoots Ami and Mitsuko, then hands the gun to Murata and orders him to kill Ami, who pleads for mercy. Shin berates Murata and then shoots Ami himself. He reveals himself as the serial killer reported on the news. A struggle ensues, Murata escapes, and, as he hails a car driven by a woman who resembles Eiko, she answers that she’s “going to hell.” Shin takes the car they arrived in and drives off, pursuing a woman with car trouble. He spots Eiko by the road, stops, and runs into the forest after her.

On-screen text closes the film, revealing that those responsible for the real murders that inspired this project were captured in 2002 and sentenced to life imprisonment.