The movie was inspired by and serves as an homage to Italian cannibal films of the late 1970s and early '80s "cannibal boom", particularly Cannibal Holocaust (1980), which features a film-within-a-film titled The Green Inferno.

The Forest was inspired by cult films such as The Descent and Cannibal Holocaust and video games like Don't Starve, and was accepted as part of Steam Greenlight in 2013.