It’s worth noting that the characters all go different kinds of crazy. As the insubstantial music deepens into something more sinister, we get to see the threads of their sanity slowly unravel. He’ll ask his colleagues to meow like their childhood cat, to talk in gibberish for several seconds, to recite the alphabet backward or recall their earliest memory. The scientist of the group, Walter, documents everyone’s mental health with simple daily tests captured on film. YellowBrickRoad uses an interesting conceit that I think could have been developed further. At this point I grew very pleased with my baller surround sound system, because this film was surely designed to be seen and especially heard in a movie theater. YellowBrickRoad, which already had an unreal, lulling aspect to it, becomes completely illusory. The music and discordant sounds emanating from the woods are profoundly unsettling, and as the crew members try to block out the noise by stuffing their ears with cotton balls, the audio takes on a distressingly muffled quality. Soon a faint, uncanny ballad can be heard through the trees, and our little Oz-trekkers immediately lose their goddamn minds. Behind them, or on either side, “the land is like liquid.” Everyone becomes a little high-strung. Mapmaker Daryl, who’s tracking their progress, frets that the coordinates only make sense going forward. The GPS declares that they’re in Melbourne or Guam. To make a bright, colorful film that scares you is something else entirely.Īs the group moves further into the woods, circumstances go askew. I think that’s one of the many unconventional choices co-writers and directors Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland made when they could have gone another, easier, more commonplace route. I like that this movie is bright and pretty. The movie’s filmed quite prettily, with saturated colors, interesting angles and well-composed shots. Although the crew’s exploits are documented by video and photography, so that it would have been a breeze to present the film as shaky “found footage,” YellowBrickRoad employs a solid budget of $500,000 very well. It obviously owes its premise to The Blair Witch Project, but the film differs greatly in style and execution. They are incessant. But if you can look past that rather irritating quirk, you’ll find a film that’s unusual and audacious. The first thing you should know about this movie is that it features a glut of Wizard of Oz references, both overt and oblique. Seventy years later, a remarkably attractive group of intrepid explorers sets out to compile research for a book on the Friar mystery, only to learn that the Yellow Brick Road is as treacherous as it is enigmatic. On October 10, 1940, the entire population of Friar, New Hampshire up and walked out of their homes, leaving behind all of their possessions and vanishing up a mysterious mountain trail marked only with a stone engraved “YELLOWBRICKROAD.” Afterward, 300 bodies were found by the military, some frozen, some burned, many slaughtered the rest of the population was never found. A confusing, unsettling, frustrating watch. The film just came out on DVD, and it’s absolutely worth a watch. YellowBrickRoad caught my interest the moment I saw the eerie trailer, but its theatrical release was limited and I missed it.
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