DVD Review: The Forbidden Girl

The Forbidden Girl is an often visually pleasing horror film, but is ultimately disjointed. It tells the story of Toby, whose girlfriend, Katie, disappears one night. And years later he is given a job as a tutor to a woman named Laura who looks exactly like Katie. And strange things begin to happen.

It opens in a strange, empty church, with Toby being told by a preacher (who turns out to be his father) that he must stop the satanic cycle, that evil will tempt him, and that all love is forbidden to him. It’s a bit goofy, but then six hours later he meets his girlfriend, Katie, in a mausoleum, and the two laugh about the preacher and his beliefs about Toby’s birthmark. But before Toby and Katie can enjoy each other, some sort of demonic entity shows up.

We don’t see what happens, and the film cuts to six weeks later (are you seeing the pattern?), with a cop telling a doctor what he knows about what happened with Toby and Katie that night. It’s exposition, but it still leaves us unsure of what happened. But when they enter the mausoleum, they find Toby in there.

Then it cuts to six years later (yes, you have it now), and Toby is being released from a mental institution, seeming to have come to terms with his experiences. He is given medication and a job referral (as a tutor, since, as we’re told, he tutored some of the younger patients during his time in the facility).

The home he is to work in is of course a mansion behind a large locked gate. There are some beautiful shots with wonderful, strong colors – greens in the exteriors, reds dominating the interiors. And Toby meets the three inhabitants of the house: Lady Wallace, an old, bed-ridden woman; Mortimer, care-taker and perhaps lover; and Laura, the woman Toby is to tutor. There is also some strange man dressed in white running around who is occasionally translucent. It’s never clear just who this is, but he seems to want to help Toby.

There are lots of creepy horror elements: a woman who can’t be in sunlight, an odd hall of portraits, secret passageways, dark wisps of smoke moving through the house, dream sequences, and so on. When some of Toby’s blood drops on Lady Wallace’s hands, her skin immediately becomes younger (making me think of Elizabeth Bathory), and the creepy portraits suddenly open their eyes. But she doesn’t attempt to get any more blood. I guess those few drops were enough, for she becomes much younger and stronger.

Through flashbacks to the night in the cemetery we learn a little more of what happened. Toby has a locket with Katie’s picture, and in one of the flashbacks we see her rip off his cross (uh-oh), telling him he no longer needs it now that he has her, and giving him the locket. By the way, the reds of the flashbacks create a nice parallel with Toby’s new environment, and make us wonder just how innocent this Katie/Laura really is.

When he meets Laura, she asks him, “Are you the new teacher?” That makes us wonder about the previous one. Of course, there is the question of why she requires a teacher at all. Though she speaks in a little girl voice (which quickly becomes irritating), and acts like a little girl, she is presumably Toby’s age. By the way, in her room, there is an “I heart New York” sign, which seems strikingly out of place.

Toby is overjoyed to see her, but she denies knowing him. Then a little later she shows up in his room, suddenly remembering meeting him in the graveyard. Toby says they have to get out of there. But why? It doesn’t seem yet that they are in any danger. She says she knows the way. But this leads to an odd bar scene with a ghost, a scene that plays sort of like a music video with some bizarre magic routine. There is a lot of interesting imagery, but it feels like stream of consciousness, propelled by hallucinogens rather than a coherent narrative. And in one shot Toby lifts his father’s mask off a body in a trunk, only to see his own face – just like Luke Skywalker does in The Empire Strikes Back. But then the whole sequence is apparently a dream, which makes it even more annoying.

Mortimer tells Toby the girl is forbidden, reminding us of Toby’s father. The relationships aren’t quite clear in this film. But after a while it seems that very little is clear. And as the film goes on, it seems more and more like some sort of Christian horror film. Mortimer has an adverse reaction to seeing a cross on the floor in Toby’s room. This is the cross that Katie pulled off in the cemetery. How did it get there?

Laura plays on an indoor swing, like a little girl, and tells Toby it’s going to be her birthday and that she wants to spend it with him because he is “someone who really likes me for who I am.” But we don’t know who she really is. And neither does Toby. And does she even know herself? Also, Toby and Katie never even had sex, so they couldn’t have been all that close; and besides, six years have passed. I can understand wanting to know just what happened that night, but is he really still in love with her? After all, even back then, they couldn’t have been dating all that long. Maybe a week or two, tops.

Well, when the demon shows up, he threatens Toby: “You will never know what true love is.” What an odd thing for a demonic being to say. And in the end it appears that the seemingly crazy preacher at the beginning was actually right all along. If only Toby had listened to his nutty preaching daddy and denied himself love, everything would be okay.

The Forbidden Girl was directed by Till Hastreiter, and was released on DVD on August 26, 2014 through Inception Media Group. The DVD includes the film’s trailer.