text: Note to Horror fans: The only horror here is when you realized you just wasted 95 minutes of your life on a movie that's so worthless it's insulting.<br /><br />I watched this because:<br /><br />The premise sounded slightly promising: It's not. It's just an excuse to use the same lame set pieces from other low-budget slasher films that weren't good either. <br /><br />The promise of naked forest nymphs sounded nice even if the movie turned out to be awful: It's not. It's SO not. The amateur cinematography makes sure the "fallen angels" are about as sexy as the average homeless person.<br /><br />The name Tom Savini has a long history in the horror genre: He's the king of low-budget special effects and lower-budget acting. Come to think of it, Savini should have been a reason not to watch this movie. It's not that he's bad, but he's almost always in bad movies. His only good role was in From Dusk Till Dawn, and he's been milking that at horror conventions ever since.<br /><br />But let's focus on the positive: Forest of the Damned is a great example of how NOT to make a movie. <br /><br />Everything else is a negative. Obviously the writer is allergic to originality. The script is terrible. That's all a given after the first 10 minutes. But the clueless pacing; the way the director treats "plot" and "characterization" as a nuisance he thinks no one cares about anyway; and the excruciatingly long and boring driving, walking, and nature sequences (no doubt added to increase the running time to make the film qualify for distribution) show a complete lack of aptitude for film and storytelling in general.<br /><br />This is another good example of the number-one way you can tell if a movie is going to be bad: If it's written and directed by the same person, expect garbage.