YellowBrickRoad
2011
Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton
In 1940, the entire population of a small New Hampshire town collectively walked up a road into the mountains, seemingly on a whim. Later, a search party discovered most of them cruelly murdered or frozen to death, but many where still missing. A modern day film crew that had been researching the event, decide to head to Friar, New Hampshire and find the path originally taken by the townsfolk. As the crew enters the woods they begin to get disoriented and eventually lost. Their personalities began to change and unexplainable music and sights begin to wear on them. They doggedly try to carry on, but soon are hopelessly lost.
YellowBrickRoad is a horror movie that posits a mystery, but has no intent on explaining it. The strangeness about the road from Friar is a device to push the characters into dark places and see what happens. That’s often a divisive way to create a story, but I’m a big fan. I think most supernatural mysteries in film are often let down by their explanations. Giving a story room to breathe and exist in the imagination imbues it with life. YellowBrickRoad lives or dies by its characters and fortunately they are interesting, if not necessarily likeable.. The events surrounding them are certainly bizarre, and although the film is largely violence free, when it does happen, it really shocks. YellowBrickRoad is all about the journey and this journey is a nightmare that descends into madness. It’s a fascinatingly odd experience.
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