YellowBrickRoad

Married couple Teddy and Melissa are looking to write a book on the mysterious disappearance of the citizens of the town of Friar, NH. Every person got up on day and walked into the woods. Every one was either found dead or declared missing except one, who managed to return, but was traumatized. Teddy and Melissa put together a team retrace their steps in order to determine what exactly happened and why.

I did not like this movie. I didn’t like it the first time I saw it and I was hoping that a second watch, with my scale in mind, would give me a new perspective of the movie - it did not.

I watched this movie and took a few days to score it. I was told my views were a bit harsh, though my points were valid. With that in mind, I really took my time to score it and I came up with a score of 3, and if I’m being honest, that’s generous. Discussing this with the friend I originally watched it with, she suggested a score of -1, which is technically possible, but the movie had to be SO egregious that it had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and while I think the movie was bad, it wasn’t THAT bad.

Close, but not quite. Let’s get into it:

Originality - A movie called “YellowBrickRoad” (and yes, it’s all one word. Why? I don’t know) you’d assume there would be a parallel between this and the Wizard of Oz, but there isn’t. The only reason I gave one point in this category was because there were sub-genre norms. It’s hard to judge a movie on originality when it follows sub-genre tropes that qualify it for that sub-genre, so I felt that although it didn’t do it well, it did the “Documentary-style horror” like a documentary-style horror.
Originality: 1 point.

Story: As I mentioned, the story is of this team trying to re-trace the steps of the misbegotten townspeople. They have the coordinates of where the trail head should be but only find a movie theater. Inside, it’s just a normal theater with a rude-ass ticket-taker (for no reason, more on that later) and Liv, who works concessions. She tells Teddy that she can take them to the trail head as long as they take her with them.

They find the trail head and begin their ill-fated journey. One of the members, Walter, does psych-evaluations on the team daily to monitor them. With them are siblings Darryl and Erin, who are cartographers, Cy, who is a forestry expert, and Jill the intern.

Because of the crew, we know that they will get lost, find something in the forest that is deadly, and because they’re deep in the woods, they will lose or run out of food and/or water. All of these things happen.

There is a hat that is found along the trail by Darryl and despite popular opinion, he keeps the hat and wears it, leading to an aggressive change to his personality.

While most of the story continues along these lines to the end, the Darryl/crazy hat subplot was handled well enough to give the overall story one point. The subplot - over time, Darryl becomes mean and rude. Erin blames the hat and at some point demands that Darryl remove it. He doesn’t, but she does. She takes the hat and runs off with it. Darryl chases her down until he catches her, beats her to death, and rips off her leg - just right off the body, with his bare hands (this is why I said “well enough”. This was ridiculous!)

Darryl runs away but is found by Teddy and Cy (I think), brought back to camp, restrained, and led around, until someone just leaves a machete unattended and Darryl steals it, sets himself free, steals the ATV they had, and drives off. He will later kill Melissa.

The story is messy and discombobulated. The team splits over whether to continue or turn back and people die off over the course of the movie, with Erin’s body at some point put on display like a scarecrow.

Welcome to the only Wizard of Oz reference minus a gold-tinted path that Teddy takes near the end.

There is music that just plays in the forest. It’s coming from “somewhere” and that “somewhere” is “where the answer must be”, so they head toward the source, not really knowing where the source is. It’s worth noting only because the group is often impacted by the noise, which is just music from the 1940s or VERY loud phonograph sounds. So loud, in fact, that there is a point where they group is physically impaired by the noise and they find it difficult to move forward.
Story: 1 point

Characters - I decided to give one point here, again, because of the Darryl subplot. In the end, everyone is there for a reason and everyone there fails at their job, not exactly their fault, however you can read the plot a miles away because everyone there had to fail. They stayed lost despite the cartographers, the psych specialist noticed people displaying troubles, but wasn’t enough to convince Teddy to turn back, the intern Jill, without a speciality was there for things to happen to, the towns-person Liv, who gave this long family backstory lied about it all, and Teddy failed to lead and keep the team together. For that, you could have just had 8 random people in the woods.

There were smaller issues I had. When Darryl was attacking Erin to death, one person just got out their binoculars and watched without alerting anyone or run down to help stop the attack. Walter, later in the movie, who is a friend of Teddy and Melissa confesses feelings for her that lead to nothing. Jill, literally just jumps to her death when her subgroup (after the split-up) stopped talking to her because she ate their bag of candy, all the real food they had, while they slept. Sadly that they were legitimately upset with her, she just hops off a cliff and no one noticed or cared. Walter kills himself while Melissa slept and he recorded the suicide. Then, on the camcorder, insisted that Melissa watch him kill himself and she does. Just sits there and watches the whole thing until she was killed by Darryl, who was hiding in the cave they were staying by but somehow he was never noticed.

I didn’t really care about the characters and beyond their sub-genre trope roles, there was nothing else to them. The personality change of Darryl was it. So there you go.
Characters: 1 point.

Ending and Enjoyment: Zero total points. We’re down to Melissa, Walter, and Teddy. Walter commits suicide, as just mentioned, Melissa is killed by Darryl (who is later killed by Liv who commits suicide by eating the poison berries that she found earlier) leaving just Teddy. Teddy finds a theater where he goes inside, sits to see a movie, you see the ghosts of the dead towns people (only for a flash) and the movie of a dead Melissa welcomes Teddy home.

The End. That’s it. Zero answers are given. There is no explanation for any of it. None of it. Not one question posed was truly addressed. Not a single one. Why was the theater so special? What led the towns-people to the woods originally? What was the deal with the music? How was it so loud and so powerful? Why a theater? What was messing with the equipment? Why was the GPS saying they were all over the world?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

I have ALL the questions and zero answers. Even with the Darryl sub-plot, I was taken out once we watch Darryl just pull Erin’s leg off with his bare hand, the only expressed feat of strength or power by Darryl the entire time (so no, I’m not assuming that the hat “gave him strength and power”.) I couldn’t even enjoy the one part that was semi-redeemable. No true ending. None to bring it all together. Nothing to bring it home. So nothing is the score.
Ending and Enjoyment: Zero points

Total Score: 3 points.