Egor (Oleg Chugunov) is a lonely teenager that misses his mother. He has just moved to an apartment building with his father Alexey (Aleksey Rozin),who is a rude man that loves him, his stepmother Yuliya (Maryana Spivak) and his newborn half-sister Varya. While going to the school, Egor stumbles upon the teenager Dasha (Glafira Golubeva) and they are bullied by Anton (Artyom Zhigulin) and his gang. Eron immediately has a crush on Dasha. His father hires the nanny Tatyana (Svetlana Ustinova) to help his wife and Egor notes that she is a creepy monster but his father does not believe in him. Soon Egor notes that the Tatyana and Varya have vanished and neither his father nor his stepmother recall that they have a baby daughter. Egor convinces Dasha and Anton to go with him to the forest to look for Varya and soon they learn that she has been abducted with other children by the evil witch Baba Yaga and she will disappear as soon as her beloved ones forget her.

"Yaga. Koshmar tyomnogo lesa", a.k.a. "Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest" is a good horror movie based on the Slavic Folklore of Baba Yaga. The British "Don't Knock Twice" is another recent movie that explores the idea of a witch that makes people forget their babies. The plot is confused in many parts but in general the film startles and entertains the viewers. Unfortunately there are many bad reviews, maybe due to the difference of cultures since this movie is different from the Hollywood clichés of the genre. My vote is seven.

Ttle (Brazil): "A Babá: O Chamado das Sombras" ("The Nanny:The Call from the Shadows")

I have been accused of being too nice when reviewing and rating movies. I guess this can be called one of those cases. This is quite the predictable horror movie, but I also feel it does a lot of things right. Jump scares and mood is where it should be.

The acting is ok too for a horror movie and the effects work in the context of the movie. Of course there is not a bookend here, but a satisfying one (at least that is what I would call it). Be afraid of the Witch, because she's coming to get you ... Horror fairy tale, nothing more nothing less

Well, I must admit that I had expected more - a lot more - from "Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest" (aka "Yaga. Koshmar tyomnogo lesa"),especially since being familiar with the myth of Baba Yaga, then expectations were amped up. So I sat down to watch this 2020 horror movie from directors Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy and Nathalia Hencker.

And I am sad to say that they failed to deliver. Sure, the storyline did have some promising aspects to it, but ultimately it just failed to deliver where it mattered. And the movie ended up being a less than mediocre movie experience and a watered down horror endeavor.

Something that brought the movie further down on the rating scale, was the dubious acting performances. It was like watching wooden, rigid dolls milling about on the screen. And it seriously didn't help the movie one bit that the dialogue was so poorly written and brought to the screen with monotonous performances.

The special effects in the movie were adequate. That counts for something, just not enough to make up for all the shortcomings that were making up the majority of this 2020 movie.

For a horror movie, then "Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest" was a horrible swing and a miss. A rather boring and slow-paced endeavor actually. If you enjoy horror movies, then your money, time and effort are better spent elsewhere, trust me.

My rating of this movie lands on a generous three out of ten stars.