One Star Classics : 825 Forest Road

825 Forest Road

Oct 08, 2025 / Scary Dwellings

It may be a lonely camp, but it is a camp I enjoy being in nonetheless: The Stephen Cognetti Camp. I wholeheartedly stan his Hell House, LLC tetralogy, and I look forward to its conclusion, set to stream on Shudder at the end of this month.

In the meantime, we have 825 Forest Road, Cognetti’s first outing outside of the Hell House franchise. This, too, is a haunted-house movie, and while critics didn’t fall over themselves to recommend it, I have a soft spot for it. At its best, it’s an effective horror movie that relies more on a tense undercurrent than on cheap jump scares.

We follow Chuck, who, after the death of his mother, moves to a small town with his wife and his sister, Isabelle. Isabelle has fallen into a depression after her mother’s death, and as she struggles with her health, she starts experiencing supernatural occurrences. Turns out one Helen Foster haunts their new house – a ghost with an affinity for torturing those suffering from mental illness. To rid the world of the ghost, we learn, you have to find and destroy her former home, 825 Forest Road, an address that seemingly doesn’t exist.

I suppose that’s a bit of a twist on the formula, and when 825 works, it works well. The implied presence of something in the house is creepy and, as with Hell House, Cognetti cleverly utilizes what you don’t really see. Blink, and you’ll miss a slight movement right in the back of the frame.

The film is broken down into chapters based on the main characters’ POVs, which serve as puzzle pieces to move the plot along. Small details that mean nothing from one person’s perspective may be integral to another character’s experience. I don’t think anyone would accuse 825 of being particularly deep, but if you put your phone away for ninety minutes, it will pay off. There are details at play here.

Other things don’t work quite as well. The movie looks very digital and could have benefited from moodier (or any type of) lighting. Stark photography works in found footage films – in regular movies, it takes away from the immersion. I don’t think this comes down to any incompetency from Cognetti and team, but limited budgets tend to rear their ugly heads during small productions like this.

And, as also tends to be the case with low-budget films, the actors are quite a bit older than the characters they portray. Particularly, Isabella looks more like an adult-ed student than the college kid she is supposed to be. It’s not a huge deal, but it does take you out of it.

That aside, 825 Forest Road is an effective, if slightly overlong, horror film, one that is eerie enough to be a good Halloween-season watch. And, perhaps more importantly, it serves as proof that Cognetti has a future outside of the Hell House franchise.

By Remi, Oct 08, 2025

Letterboxd summary: After a family tragedy, Chuck Wilson hopes to start a new life in Ashland Falls with his wife Maria and little sister Elizabeth, but he quickly discovers that the town has a dark history of being haunted by a ghostly woman who drives residents to suicide.