YellowBrickRoad review

YellowBrickRoad review

The new, and strangely title YellowBrickRoad, no there aren’t meant to be any spaces, is an adequate movie that starts with a reasonable enough premise, but has an unsatisfying, albeit interesting, payoff. There is a definite sense of eeriness in the movie, but it never quite reaches of the level of excellence that it should have.

It all begins in 1940 in New Hampshire where, so the story goes, the entire population walked up a strange mountain train and then all disappeared. Some of the bodies were later found mutilated and frozen solid, and the sole survivor was only able to mumble incoherently.

Fast forward 70 years and the facts of the case have been declassified, so an intrepid film crew decides to trek up the same train to try and find out what really happened. This brief synopsis is the closest this movie gets to an actual plot. There is no explanation as to why these film makers are so obsessed with what happened and why they are so desperate to follow in their footsteps. It is never explained either how the film makers manage to find the co-ordinates so easily and quickly for what is supposed to be a long lost trail.

So we have now established that YellowBrickRoad isn’t big on explanations, but strangely enough, the movie still works to a certain degree. Once our intrepid group leave the town’s safety and head out into the wilderness, weird things start occurring, whispers float around in the air, 1940’s music is audible in the trees, and invisible forces gradually cause this previously happy band to take leave of their senses.

The directors, Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland are obviously big Blair Witch fans as the influence is obvious, but thankfully they keep it above being yet another rip off. Another plus is that they chose traditional camerawork instead of the overused technique known as ‘shaky cam’. YellowBrickRoad manages to achieve that much lauded accolade of being an original movie.

The title will be a giveaway for some that there is also a heavy influence here from The Wizard of Oz, and it is when this movie shares similarities with that classic that we get the strongest parts of YellowBrickRoad. Watch very closely as the horrific scenes unfold and you will spot that there are, albeit subtle, nods towards Dorothy and the characters that me meets on her travels to Oz.

The tangible creepiness and all the questions that go unanswered are worthy of praise, endings of suspense movies all too often tie themselves up in knots attempting to tie up all the loose ends, YellowBrickRoad is happy to be nebulous. While there are no obvious duds in the cast, the script is found lacking at times and a particularly weak point is that the characters all tend to blend into one, making them hard to distinguish from one another. That said, there is a stand out performance from Laura Heisler as the little girl who tags along.

This movie tries very hard to be different, on certain level it succeeds but sadly, like so many other movies these days, leaves you feeling rather unsatisfied. That said, it is still worth a look and a lot better than some of the so-called horrors that have been churned out recently.