La Forêt des disparus (2022–2023) User Reviews

A good atmospheric thriller

[lesley_65 · 7/10 · 5 September 2023]

Like all the French thrillers I've seen this was well written and suspenseful. The acting and locations were great, as was the cinematography and dark atmosphere throughout. It had a good variety characters, but I felt they didn't gave enough depth for the total running time of over 3 hours. This is perhaps why the story seemed overly reliant on plot twists to keep your attention. However, I have to say that these twists were both surprising and believable.

The conclusion was satisfying and delivered a strong message. Definitely worth watching but probably would have been better suited to a movie length production.

Sometimes clumsy

[laduqesa · 6/10 · 12 January 2024]

I watched it all despite several obvious flaws. The worst one was that the German cops spoke in French all the time. Being played by French actors, I suppose they couldn't do anything else, I guess. However, it was bizarre to see German locations, signs, names, buildings but the characters speaking a different language.

And there was some clumsiness. There was a trite effort to get us to suspect one of the German cops. Likewise to make us think a kid was the danger. It really was quite pitiful. And handing over suspects to a different jurisdiction without so much as an extradition paper or a judge's say-so was absurd in the extreme.

Nonetheless, it was an easy three hours over four episodes to get into. I just lost myself in the twists and turns and enjoyed the scenes and scenery.

Recommended? A tentative yes.

Wonderful landscapes

[Baltambre · 2/10 · 12 October 2023]

Wonderful landscape worth two stars

Being half French half German, from Strasbourg, I was very much looking forward to watching this series.

But, beside the fact that French actors playing German characters is just hilarious, the story itself is far too far-fetched to convey any believable thrill. Lots of interesting ideas I guess, and battles worth to fight, but the script, the writing is really -really!- poor, as for much of the productions nowadays.

Here are some questions/remarks

• I don't understand the reasons behind what has become the stereotypical rotten adolescent, always extreme, always angry, always shouting, always impolite when not constantly insulting everyone and anyone over the age of 20. Is incivility synonymous to genius in the little heads of the writers?

• You'd think that someone like a "Juge d'Instruction" wouldn't steal anything in a house being searched "sur commission rogatoire", especially as she is the one insisting the procedure should be respected, but hell, no, why?

• The house is being searched without gloves and no body cameras
• People seem to go back and forth from France to Germany meddling in each others criminal affairs without official papers all the time
• Why doesn't Mme le Juge go for another specialist, ask for a second opinion sooner? It's been a year, and yet, we are supposed to believe that the whole follow-up was done by one single person, a Dr Stein? No neurologist, no post-operative team, no surgeon, no psychotherapy, nothing? No pharmacist either, no revision, no "Médecin traitant"? Are these people so far away from the medical world and the french welfare system?

These small details are legions, and this is what makes it so impossible, and why it is so bad.

Do not recommend.

not worth watching, unless you like an implausible and bad plot

[awwestra · 2/10 · 28 October 2023]

The fact that the German police speak French among themselves and to everyone is one of the most believable elements in the series.

The first part of the series starts off catchy and exciting, but the plot quickly sinks into a quicksand of completely unbelievable action and plot twists.

An attempt is made to constantly mislead the viewer, but at such a pace and everything is so unbelievable that all sense of reality is killed.

Also the theme it's all about; an indictment against femicide is presented so clumsily that you actually just want to turn off your TV out of misery. And honestly that's the best you can do. I made the mistake of watching all four parts. Waist of time.