'The Forest' Forest IS Real — Star Natalie Dormer Visited and Lived to Tell Us About It

Aokigahara is a lush and picturesque 14-square-mile forest that lies at the foot of the towering, snow-capped Mount Fuji in northwest Japan. It’s also one of the world’s most popular suicide destinations, leading to the urban legend that the woods are inhabited by malevolent spirits.

So in other words, it’s the perfect setting for a horror movie. Enter The Forest, a psychological screamer starring Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games) as Sara, a woman who journeys to Aokigahara after her twin sister, Jess (also played by Dormer), disappears there.

Related: Watch the trailer for ‘The Forest’

Though the film’s woodland scenes were shot in Serbia, some of the production did take place in Japan, and Dormer herself took a daytrip from Tokyo to Aokigahara. “It’s sacred to the Japanese, it has a long tradition of respect for this beautiful area before this dubious association came into the forest” said Dormer, who stopped by Yahoo with co-star Taylor Kinney (Chicago Fire), who plays a journalist she encounters named Aiden. “So it just makes you feel all the sadder and more compassionate that people pick it for [suicide].”

Like her central character, in the film, Dormer wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the purportedly haunted grounds, and even broke the movie’s No. 1 rule: Do NOT leave the path. “Very interestingly my Japanese driver wouldn’t leave the path at all,” she said. “I wanted to step off five meters or so into the forest to take some pictures. They are superstitious. He woudn’t leave the path.”

The Forest opens everywhere Friday.

Watch Dormer compare Kinney’s Aiden to her 'Game of Thrones’ character Margaery Tyrell: