This road has no fairy tale ending!
Director: Andy Mitton & Jesse Holland
Writer: Andy Mitton & Jesse Holland
Cast: Michael Laurino, Anessa Ramsey, Alex Draper, Cassidy Freeman, Clark Freeman, Tara Glordano, Sam Elmore, Laura Heisler & Lee Wilkof
Studio: Bloody Disgusting Selects & The Collective
Special Features: Commentary (Andy Mitton & Jesse Holland)
A film’s ending bears a disproportionate amount of weight on the overall enjoyment of the film for most people. Perhaps it’s because the end of a film is the last impression it makes on us, and our dissatisfaction with it then somehow taints all of the preceding material, but to discount the majority of something is a dumb way to a judge anything. A film could be a masterwork in atmosphere and suspense, but if “it was all a dream,” people feel cheated and dislike it due to its ending. YellowBrickRoad isn’t a masterwork in atmosphere and suspense, but it exceeds at both with a throwback to slow burn, character-driven horror. But in its approach it also delivers a surreal experience that may not offer a satisfying enough conclusion for some.
In the fall of 1940, the residents of Friar, NH abandoned their homes and their lives to walk up an unmarked trail. When the authorities finally arrived, several of the townsfolk were dead but most were never accounted for. Only one man that walked up the trail was found alive, but he was already too lost in his insanity to explain what exactly happened. Now, 70 years later, and still with only speculation to say what happened in the woods, Cy (Laurino) and his girlfriend Melissa (Ramsey) have put together a team to assist them as they attempt to walk up the trail and discover what exactly happened to the original townsfolk. While the expedition starts with inspired optimism and some campfire laughs, instruments soon fail and team members break down as unexplainable music echoes throughout the woods.
When Walter (Draper), the team’s psychiatrist, asks Cy where he was born as part of his exam, Cy replies, “I was born… I was born on the trail.” But it doesn’t matter where Cy was born or where he’s been, because he’s now headed down “Yellow Brick Road” – a path to madness.
I’ll consistently watch splatter films and shitty B-movies and gleefully laugh along to the excesses of both, but when I want to be truly frightened, films like YellowBrickRoad do the trick. As I said above, this is a character-driven film, and so the characters – not the unknown evil lurking in the woods – are put centerstage. It’s each character’s breakdown and and the inevitability of their demise that builds tension. As the audience, we already know people have disappeared before, and even though we don’t know what happened to them, we sense they’re not all right. We want Cy and his expedition to turn around before it’s too late, but they never do. When things eventually get bad, they get really bad and really weird. There’s a reason no one’s ever seen the original townsfolk again, and that reason, no matter how impossible it may seem, is unnatural – it’s supernatural, in fact.
YellowBrickRoad has a sluggish pace that lets the isolation of the woods and a quiet uneasiness gradually settle in. These people may be walking through the vast New England wilderness, but with every step, it feels like they’re somehow being consumed by the woods too. It’s quite an unexpected setting for a claustrophobic film, and credit not only the direction but also Andy Milton’s and Dan Brennan’s sound design for the suffocating atmosphere. While claustrophobia is usually associated with inescapable confinement, the 1940s-era music that’s heard throughout the woods doesn’t physically confine but is still inescapable as it slowly engulfs each person’s psyche. While each of the cast successfully convey their psychological breakdown, Anessa Ramsey and Laura Heisler stand out for how they elicit sympathy and terror, respectively. What isn’t effective, however, is the goriest scene in the film. It’s at a critical point in the film – the first opportunity we have to witness the full effects of the trail – and it took me out of the film for a split second.
But the expedition sets out to find the answer behind the trail, and the whole film builds to this reveal, which seems to be a point of contention for most. I won’t divulge much about the film’s conclusion, but I’ll admit it’s not a particularly satisfying one. In the final reel of the film, surreal elements start to creep in, and the answer you’ve been waiting for is left open to interpretation (the directors say budget issues also kept the ending from being exactly how they imagined while writing the script – 50k was apparently needed to pull it off as originally conceived). But even though the film’s ending is indeed hard to interpret, it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise either. YellowBrickRoad‘s slow descent into madness ultimately arrives at madness – make of it what you will, but don’t let it spoil the 90 minutes of tense delirium that precedes it.
