Not what the other theories suggest (spoilers)
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Forest
sawplo — 9 years ago(September 04, 2016 08:30 AM)
I don't see why people think this is a case of a split personality. I don't see any evidence in the movie at all to support this.
Instead, what is more likely is that Sara has completely flipped the perspectives of the twins with regard to what happened to her parents.
Sara is the one who saw what happened. And she has been telling this lie to her sister all her life (as well as to other people). She has been protecting her because that is what she did for her sister. This is made clear because when she retells her lie to Aiden, the film makes it pretty clear that she is lying by showing us what really happened. I believe that Sara's sadness is created because she wants so deeply to believe her own lie, but she simply can't. And so she pretends that it was her sister that kept her from seeing the truth, thinking somehow eventually she will believe it.
This is also made clear because the guide sees and states that Sara is the one with the sadness. The film reinforces that Sara is the one who saw what happened to her parents, with the scene in the cave when Sara picks up the old children's slide picture toy. Sara sees the scenes from the past which she would not be able to see if she truly closed her eyes the whole time. And, finally, near the film's end, it is reinforced again when Sara hallucinates the basement scene. She sees what happened, because she was the twin who viewed it. She also covers young Jess' eyes because this is what she did. She protected Jess from seeing what happened.
As such, that is why Jess is able to survive in the forest so long. She does not have this "sadness" that her sister, Sara, holds inside her, because she does not know what really happened to her parents. The forest, therefore, has no ability to claim Jess. But, it does have the ability to claim Sara, and so it does.
The guide realizes this, because he knows what happens to people with sadness in this forest. He realizes that Jess was safe from the forest, and, he sees that Sara is now just another of the forest's victims. I don't believe the "jump scare" at the end means that the guide is taken. I think it simply reinforces this theme, and the guide understanding what happened. -
ryansassy1 — 9 years ago(September 18, 2016 11:09 AM)
Spot on. Your theory makes so much more sense than a split personality. We are constantly shown Sara's flash backs to a girl seeing the bodies of her parents in the basement. She knew all along what had happened, and was hiding it from herself because it was too horrible for her to deal with. So it was Sara who had the sadness which made her vulnerable to the Forest, not Jess.
"I'm sorry, but.." is a self-contained lie.
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dg-benz — 9 years ago(September 21, 2016 08:43 PM)
You're absolutely right.
Remember when Sara was telling Aidan the story of her parents' death when they were both in the forest? In the flashback scene when they were little with her grandmother, we hear two loud bangs before "Jess" sees the bodies of her parents. Sara says it was a drunk driver who ran them over, but Aidan then asks her "Did they ever get him?" to which Sara replies "Who?" I wondered at the time why she would ask that as it was obvious who Aidan was referring to (the drunk driver), but now it all makes sense.
She was lying. There was no car accident. There was no drunk driver. It was a murder suicide, and the two loud bangs were gunshots. In the end, we really do see that it was actually Sara that witnessed the gruesome scene with her parents so therefore she was the one with sadness, as Michi stated earlier in the film before they went into the forest. It's her sadness and inability to deal with it that causes her to see all kinds of hallucinations in the forest, and eventually she ends up killing herself. Also remember that she was told told that most people are made to kill themselves in that forest, and that's exactly what happened to her. -
reaseltbim — 9 years ago(November 21, 2016 09:50 AM)
We dont know if jess wanted to suicide or not.
I have a feeling that sarah made up the stories of jess trying to suicide two times before
I think sarah might have been the one that tried suicide in the past and she lied about it being jess.
Maybe jess when to visit because she thought it was romantic -
KatharineFanatic — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 03:48 PM)
I think both of them saw what happened, but Sara blocked it from her mind. In her words, she doesn't look darkness in the face whereas Jess isn't afraid to delve into it. Sara locked the truth away in her mind; the forest made her relive blocked memories.