Part of the Bloody Disgusting and Collective-organized Horrofest playing at AMCs across the country, YellowBrickRoad is the second film in the lineup and a remarkably well-done picture which, despite a disappointing ending and a few too many film references, manages to produce one of the eeriest situations to come from the genre in a while. YellowBrickRoad rises above the rest with its use of sound, forgoing the typical sudden loud noises and sharp strings in favor of a permanent fixture that gradually gets under the viewers and characters’ skin, providing the basis for every horrible event that follows. It’s a welcome change in the genre’s increasingly overused bag of tricks, and it’s only made better as YellowBrickRoad plays with themes of paradise, psychological torture, and human nature in a “lost in the woods” entry worthy of a view by any horror fan--at least until the final two minutes, where it all falls apart.
In 1940, the inhabitants of Friar, New Hampshire set out down a road promisingly titled YellowBrickRoad never to be heard from again. Today, Teddy (Michael Laurino), his wife Melissa (Anessa Ramsey), and their friend Walter (Alex Draper) organize an expedition to YellowBrickRoad to discover what happened all those years ago and figure out why those people never came back so they can author the definitive book on the subject. The rest of their team consists of cartographers Erin (Cassidy Freeman of Smallville fame) and Daryl Luger (Clark Freeman), intern Jill (Tara Giordano), survivalist Cy (Sam Elmore), and tagalong townie Liv (Laura Heisler). They set off down the trail using videotaped interviews to track their mental states which begin to take a turn for the worse when loud, inexplicable music begins playing overhead as they trek in a spiral pathway through the wilderness. Eventually group dynamics begin to break down and the music eats away at their psyche, inciting violence and general hysteria. Do they push onward? Do they have a choice?
Despite using a cast of almost entirely unknowns and actors-on-the-rise, YellowBrickRoad still manages to avoid one the horror genre’s most common problems: poor acting. While not stellar, the performances of people undergoing a potentially supernatural deterioration of their mental health keep you riveted throughout the film’s duration, even helping overcome a weak script that indulges far too often in film-school tendencies of movie quotes, obvious plot devices (the hat), and overly large leaps in tension escalation. The main trio of Laurino, Ramsey, and Draper help to keep things in focus with three very distinct personalities, whereas the rest come across like basic horror victim tropes: the joker, the quiet innocent, repressed aggression nice guy, etc.
What makes YellowBrickRoad an atypical horror film is that it doesn’t just devolve into a slasher once everyone starts losing their grip on reality under the perpetual sonic fog of the psychologically damaging music. Instead it continues to follow the characters as they each make their own decisions, whether it’s based out of some obsession for answers, a hidden envy, or sense of abandonment. Violence occurs, but it’s less the main attraction than it is the consequence of more important happenings.
Whether or not the film takes its central atmospheric element from the versions of musical torture used against prisoners of war, where heavy metal is blared every hour of every day over loudspeakers, is hard to say, but it’s the same idea. Writers and Directors Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland took the concept, turning it on its head by changing it to mellow classical crooning, and combined it with the promise of paradisiacal revelation of the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz. What level of suffering would you endure, what would you sacrifice, to get to the end of the yellow brick road and have the wonderful Wizard of Oz grant you a wish? Is it enough to just believe that there’s something larger than life to be found, or would you willingly march until you died in pursuit of it?
The music and these themes make for a film that gradually eats at you, its use of sound its most effective tool in generating dread. However, all of its subtle horror nuance is essentially destroyed by the film’s final two minutes—which I won’t spoil here—but it’s an ending badly in need of revision as it almost entirely negates the film’s ideas and falls far too deeply into that aforementioned movie-reference indulgence that hindered the dialogue. The last two minutes feel like a slap in the face in light of the other 90-some minutes of gradually built psychological attrition.
"YellowBrickRoad" opens June 1, 2011 and is not rated. Horror, Thriller. Directed by Andy Mitton, Jesse Holland. Written by Andy Mitton, Jesse Holland. Starring Anessa Ramsey, Cassidy Freeman, Clark Freeman, Laura Heisler, Alex Draper, Michael Laurino, Tara Giordano, Sam Elmore.
