History Main / DontGoInTheWoods

* In ''Literature/TheWellAtTheWorldsEnd'', the Wood Perilous is extremely dangerous because of the conflict between three neighboring city-states: Hampton under Scaur, the Burg of the Four Friths, and the land of the Wheat-wearers. Anyone who passes through is likely to be killed or MadeASlave.

* ''VideoGame/{{Slender}}'': The Slender Man haunts a forest the the protagonist finds themself stuck in.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfIchabodAndMrToad'': The Headless Horseman sequence from the ''Literature/TheLegendOfSleepyHollow'' segment. Discovering that Ichabod's weakness is superstition, Brom Bones decides to sing the tale of the legendary Headless Horseman to scare him. The horseman supposedly travels the dark, spooky woods on Halloween each year, searching for a living head to replace the one which he has lost. The only way to escape the ghost is to cross a covered bridge. On his ride home through the woods, he is pursued by the HeadlessHorseman. After being chased through the forest and nearly decapitated, Ichabod, remembering Brom's advice, rides across the covered bridge to stop the ghost's pursuit. But as he looks back to see his ghostly pursuer vanish, the horseman stops and throws a jack-o'-lantern at him.

* ''Film/{{Grizzly}}'': A larger-than-life bear makes life hell for the campers and rangers of the national park it decides to turn into its stomping ground. At one point, a female ranger who is supposed to be keeping watch for it decides to go off trail into the woods to soak her feet in a stream, which segues into her taking a waterfall shower in her skivvies. The bear appears and FanDisservice ensues.

''Film/{{Grizzly}}'': A larger-than-life bear makes life hell for the campers and rangers of the national park it decides to turn into its stomping ground. At one point, a female ranger who is supposed to be keeping watch for it decides to go off trail into the woods to soak her feet in a stream, which segues into her taking a waterfall shower in her skivvies. The bear appears and FanDisservice ensues.

''Film/{{Grizzly}}'': A larger-than-life bear makes life hell for the campers and rangers of the national park it decides to turn into its stomping ground.

A SubTrope of DeadlyRoadTrip. The darker equivalent of the HorribleCampingTrip. For a doomed wilderness expedition, see RiverOfInsanity. Can overlap with WildWilderness, but with much darker overtones. See also EnchantedForest, for when forests are portrayed as enchanted, mysterious, and full of strange things, which may or may not overlap with this trope. For other wooded environs depicted as dangerous and hostile places, see HungryJungle and SwampsAreEvil. Closely related to NatureIsNotNice, where the wilderness, in general, is inhospitable for human beings.

* ''Film/Halloween5TheRevengeOfMichaelMyers'' ends with Michael Myers chasing the protagonists into an eerie, foggy woodlands with a car. When he crashes the car, he gets out completely unscathed and proceeds to stalk the victims through the forest with a butcher knife.

* ''Film/JustBeforeDawn'' is a typical SlasherMovie where a bunch of twenty-somethings camp out deep in the woods and meet death. [[spoiler:What isn't so typical is the fact that [[TwoDunIt there are actually two killers]]]].

* ''Film/LesbianVampireKillers'': Two down-on-their-luck young men go to the forests of Britain for a holiday and end up holed up in a cottage under siege by -- you guessed it -- {{Lesbian Vampire}}s.
* ''Film/LetterNeverSent'' is about four geologists who travel deep into the Siberian wilderness to hunt for diamonds, only to be caught in a harrowing struggle for survival after the forest catches fire.

* ''Film/MothersDay'' features a trio of women going on a camping trip, only to be abducted by a family of psychopaths.

* ''VideoGame/Clown2020'': A forest is one of the maps you can hunt for cards while avoiding [[MonsterClown the clown]] in.

* ''VideoGame/GhoulsForest'', a series of [[GameMod Game Mods]], has the player chased through the woods by [[OurGhoulsAreCreepier assorted ghouls]].
* ''VideoGame/InSilence'': The plot of the game is that four people are stuck in the woods one night with a [[EldritchAbomination horrifying monstrosity]] that will kill them if they don't either fix their car and drive away, or open up the armory and kill it.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'': It is extremely inadvisable to go into the Lost Woods unless you are a Kokiri child with a guardian fairy, if you don't you want to become one of the undead monsters that roam the forest. Oddly, it's implied by Saria that she and Link used to play in the woods before he received his fairy. This may either be attributed to him being guided by Saria or simply that he's the bearer of a portion of the Triforce.
* ''VideoGame/{{Limbo}}'''s first act is set in an eerie, fog-shrouded forest full of monsters.

* ''VideoGame/{{Oakwood}}'' is set in an abandoned camp that has dinosaurs wandering around eating any campers that go there.

* ''VideoGame/RawFootage'' has you exploring a forest said to be inhabited by a mysterious creature. You're trying to get video evidence that it exists, only everyone else who tried the same before you wound up dead.

* ''VideoGame/{{Slender}}'', featuring [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos the long-limbed gentle...-man? thing?- mentioned below]], is a textbook example of why forests should be avoided.

* ''VideoGame/UntilDawn'', drawing inspiration from the many {{slasher movie}}s that have employed this trope, is about eight friends who take a winter getaway at a hotel deep in some mountainous, [[SnowMeansDeath snow-covered]] woods haunted by a psychotic killer [[spoiler:and infested with {{wendigo}}s]]. It doesn't end well for any of them.

* ''Film/TheVillage'' had this, with people being warned to stay out of the woods because of the monsters. When the girl protagonist goes to get help, she gets chased by them. [[spoiler:They turn out to be not real, but she only finds that out later]].

** Place names like Höllental (Hell Valley, leading up to Himmelsreich, or Realm of Heaven), Notschrei (Scream of Distress), and Siehdichfür (Be Aware) do of course help this.

* In some zones of Mexico (particularly the states of Michoacán and Veracruz, which have the quite unlucky combination of thick forests and heavy cartel activity), it is ill-advised to travel at night through forest highways, especially if you don't know the road. Although there are safer federal highways, other, more remote roads can be very dangerous. They are dark and often neglected, and you risk falling victim to muggers playing a WoundedGazelleGambit (when they're not blocking the road), or worse, getting mistaken by [[ProperlyParanoid local cartels]] for undercover rivals. Either way, it wouldn't end well.

* ''Film/CabinFever'': The kids go on a trip to a cabin in the woods and contract a flesh-eating disease. HilarityEnsues.

* ''Film/DontGoInTheWoods'', about a group of campers who venture into the woods and come face to face with a deranged killer. More HilarityEnsues. [[{{Narm}} This time unintentionally]].

* ''Film/TheEvilDead1981'', where a group of college students go to a cabin in the woods and accidentally unleash demons from a TomeOfEldritchLore. HilarityEnsues, including [[WhenTreesAttack tree rape]], DemonicPossession and, eventually, TimeTravel.

* ''WesternAnimation/MavkaTheForestSong'': The villagers don't go in the forest Mavka and the other {{Nature Spirit}}s inhabit, for they believe them to be demons. They're not, but some like [[OurSirensAreDifferent Ondina]] can be very territorial and eager to defend the local nature out of bad past experiences with humans.

%%* ''Film/DeadLands'': The titular Dead Lands are described as a forbidden, scary place.

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[[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/snow_white_forest.png]]]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''ComicBook/Robin1993'': When Tim Drake takes a road trip into the Ozarks to follow a gun runner to his source he stumbles across an EldritchAbomination that twists people's memories in order to pass as human. When their disguise is broken they kill everyone in their path until they've bound a new person to form a new one, wiping their mind and making them rely on her. The thing has left a number of weird societies in its wake including a bunch of mentally scared former cannibals and a group of "pacifists" who regularly meet to try and kill the mute child she's bound herself to that recovers from any harm so long as he's close enough.
* ''ComicBook/SupermanSupergirlMaelstrom'': [[ComicBook/{{Superman}} Kal-El]] takes [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} his cousin]] on a camping trip in an alien jungle, assuring it is not dangerous...despite of being full of hostile humanoids, ferocious giant predators, weird monsters and poisonous flora.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* A song from Finnish heavy-metal band, Music/{{Terasbetoni}}, is called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUHYOBoZHU0 "Älä mene metsään"]] ("Don't go in the woods").
* A song by the Swedish techno-bluegrass band Music/{{Rednex}}, called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1xueTp9gfk "Is he alive"]] tells about a HumanoidAbomination that plays the fiddle and hides in a mine in the woods.
* Music/QueensOfTheStoneAge:
** "Someone's in the Wolf": "Once you're lost in twilight's blue, you don't find the way, the way finds you".
** "Mosquito Song" implies that the cannibals are waiting in the forest.
* Music/TheKinks song "Wicked Annabella" warns:
-->Don't go into the woods tonight\\
'cause underneath the sticks and stones\\
are lots of little demons enslaved by Annabella\\
waitin' just to carry you home

* "The Teddy Bears' Picnic"; especially the last verse:
-->If you go down in the woods today you better not go alone\\
It's lovely down in the woods today but safer to stay at home\\
For every bear that ever there was will gather there for certain\\
Because today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic
* The music video of ''Voracity'' by Japanese pop-rock band ''Myth & Roid'' shows a rabbit mask-wearing HumanoidAbomination haunting [[EldritchLocation creepy woods]]. Later, it starts pursuing a little girl that entered the place in manner reminiscent of ''Film/{{Juon}}'' and does ''[[NothingIsScarier something]]'' to her when it catches up.

* Creator/JimGaffigan: If you ever get up to go to the bathroom at night while you're camping, you might as well say to your friends "Nice knowin' ya! You want to get killed with me, or do you want the SerialKiller to get you when you come looking for me?"

* ''VideoGame/AWalkInTheWoods'': The forest the kids are camping in is inhabited by a monster and his inhuman children. The kids need to find each other and get out of the woods before they become more of the monster's children.

* ''VideoGame/{{Wick}}'': The forest is haunted by five murderous ghostly children. In-game collectibles imply their supernatural abilities predate their deaths and that [[spoiler: two of them may have never been human to begin with]].
* ''VideoGame/WitchHunt'' takes place in an expansive, dark forest surrounding a small colonial town, where a sinister witch has been creating armies of scary creatures that have been terrorizing the residents. Among its horrors include a werewolf that killed the player's horse, the Witch herself, a tree monster that her invincibility is tied to, giant spiders, zombies, and shambling skeleton creatures.

%%* ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfIchabodAndMrToad'': The Headless Horseman sequence from the ''Literature/TheLegendOfSleepyHollow'' segment.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': The ponies of Equestria treat the Everfree Forest as an EldritchLocation, looking at it with fear, and preferring to avoid it when possible. Turns out, the forest isn't so bad... it just happens to be an EldritchLocation '''for them only''', because ''the plants and animals fend by themselves without pony aid, and the weather is not [[PaintingTheFrostOnWindows under the control of the pegasus ponies]]''; which clashes directly with the rest of the pony-ordered, cheerfully civilized Equestria. It is of note, though, that Everfree Forest ''does'' contain a lot of genuine danger in the form of dangerous creatures such as [[OurManticoresAreSpinier manticores]], [[BasiliskAndCockatrice cockatrices]] and [[BearsAreBadNews Ursas]], as well as assorted nasty stuff like Poison Joke -- a plant which causes humorous afflictions on those who come in contact with it based on its own warped sense of humor -- and tends to offer some exotic new danger every time it's visited. It's just not as unnatural as the ponies believe. Zecora, meanwhile, lives quite happily in the forest.

** ''VideoGame/SkinwalkerHunt'', from the same developer, has you playing as a globe-trotting [[BadassNative Navajo hunter]] travelling to the forests of the world to hunt {{Skin Walker}}s and demonically-possessed wildlife. Including the forests of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and a dark and severely haunted forest in France (which is basically a NostalgiaLevel to ''Witch Hunt'').