I watch a lot of dreck, as longtime readers know quite well.  As a horror fan (and amateur aficionado), I’ve seen some bad stuff—just absolute garbage.

But bad is better than boring.  This week’s film, 2025’s 825 Forest Road is boring—mostly.

The film centers on the small town of Ashland Falls, where a couple and the husband’s estranged kid sister move into an improbably affordable house.  The husband is a piano teacher, the wife is an online influencer, and the kid sister is a college student on an art scholarship.  The sister was driving when she and her mother were involved in a terrible car accident, killing the mother and leaving the sister riddled with guilt.  The brother left the mother and sister years earlier, apparently in a semi-final fashion, and is now trying to make amends.

You can see where this is going:  lot of whinging about trauma, etc.  The wife has bipolar disorder, too, so all of her supernatural encounters are called into question by her skeptical husband.

Essentially, there is a house located at a lost address, the titular 825 Forest Road.  The resident of that house was a woman whose daughter was bullied to death, and now the mother’s vengeful spirit terrorizes the town.  Specifically, the spirit attacks anyone who attempts to find the location of 825 Forest Road; generally, she just shows up and makes life miserable for people.

The one thing that I found somewhat compelling about this flick was the fact that it involves an existential, supernatural horror that manifests every generation or so to terrorize the town.  It was very reminiscent of Stephen King’s It in this regard, although not nearly as interesting.  A group of ostensible gardeners meets in open secret to discuss the ghost, but most townspeople don’t even want to acknowledge her existence.

Well, the film plods along in chapters, giving us the husband’s perspective, the wife’s perspective, and the sister’s perspective.  It becomes pretty obvious that (spoiler alert) the home this family has purchased is the house, which explains why they experienced hauntings almost as soon as they purchased the place.

825 Forest Road is not a great flick.  It’s pretty bad.  Worse, it’s boring.  I can’t recommend it, but if you like the idea of people vaguely teaming up to find a lost address in a vain attempt to stop a supernatural menace, it might be worth your ninety minutes.  Otherwise, it’s a hard pass.