THE HAUNTED FOREST movie poster | ©2026 Quiver Distribution

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Grayson Gwaze, Cedric Gegel, Kaitlyn Lunardi, Meghan Reed, Keith Boynton
Writer: Keith Boynton, story by Devin McEwan
Director: Keith Boynton
Distributor: Quiver Distribution
Release Date: February 13, 2026 (Digital, VOD)

Markoff’s Haunted Forest is a real-world attraction in Dickerson, MD, voted one of the country’s best of its kind. THE HAUNTED FOREST builds a fictional narrative around the place, giving it a different owner and crew.

In THE HAUNTED FOREST, written from Devin McEwan’s story and directed by Keith Boynton, high school senior Zach (Grayson Gwaze) has scored a scholarship to an elite establishment. This brings him back into the orbit of his beloved older cousin Mark (Cedric Gegel), who has a wife and two young daughters but pours his heart and soul into his haunt, which runs weekends in October.

Zach, an aspiring horror comics artist, is delighted to be part of Mark’s Haunted Forest scare team. He’s shown the ropes by Haunted Forest veteran and Mark’s best friend Jacko (filmmaker Boynton).

Zach’s first night on the job introduces him to flirtatious, slightly older makeup artist Sarah (Kaitlyn Lunardi), who paints him as a skeleton. Zach has the time of his life popping out and frightening the customers.

His enthusiasm for the gig takes a toll, causing Zach to fall asleep in class and have odd nightmares. Schoolmate Carly (Meghan Reed) shows herself eager to help Zach with his studies and to get to know him better.

The Haunted Forest is said to be built on the site of the massacre of four hundred members of the Piscataway tribe by white colonizers. Sarah leads a group that is anxious to seek hereditary spiritual forgiveness from the victims.

This is our first hint that THE HAUNTED FOREST may be taking on more than it is capable of suitably addressing. It’s one thing for a movie to be topical and thought-provoking. It’s another for it to cite real genocide and use it to underpin something that turns out to be essentially pop entertainment, especially when characters who take the genocide seriously are depicted as eccentric in their concern.

But that’s not the biggest issue here. THE HAUNTED FOREST starts as agreeably naturalistic, following Zach as he embarks on his first real job in an unusual, immersive workplace.

Some bad stuff starts to happen, with the characters and audience wondering if the cause is psychosis or supernatural. This is also handled in matter-of-fact fashion. There is gore, which is comparatively restrained for the genre, with more implied than actually shown.

Plausibility suffers when, after the second incident, the authorities don’t simply shut the Haunted Forest down altogether. (Surely the gung-ho Mark could have found a way around this?)

The third-act revelations mostly negate the deliberately-paced but engaging earlier portions, although we do get a few good jump scares. It mostly doesn’t come off as seems intended.

Gwaze and Reed are charming, with Gwaze showing real youthful leading man chops.

The haunt attraction subgenre has loads of potential. THE HAUNTED FOREST begins by living up to it, only to let it down in the finale.

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