Review: ‘YellowBrickRoad’ turns ‘Wizard of Oz’ into survivalist horror
Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton were ahead of their time.
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YellowBrickRoad was way ahead of the curve. A few years ago, a whole new horror subgenre took root: public domain horror. From Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey to Screamboat, everyone is hopping on that bandwagon of exploiting childhood treasures for headlines and clicks. And nine times out of 10, the offerings just aren’t very good. Co-directors Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton took a spin down the yellow brick road with this little-known Wizard of Oz riff. Instead of going for exaggerated camp, the filmmakers go for a serious and grounded survivalist horror film that is better than it has any right to be. The 2010 film, now streaming on CrankedUpTV, configures an urban legend about the yellow brick road and the horrors nestled within dark, haunted woodlands.
Expedition leader Teddy Barnes (Michael Laurino) puts together a crew, including his wife Melissa (Anessa Ramsey) and sibling cartographers Daryl (Clark Freeman) and Erin Luger (Cassidy Freeman), and ventures into Friar, a small town in New Hampshire, which was the site of the massive 1940 disappearance of the entire community after viewing The Wizard of Oz. Almost like in a trance, townsfolk walked into the woods, never to be seen again. For decades, that ill-fated day has haunted generations, and the event and trailhead quickly became declassified information.
As the group ventures further into the woods, madness soon sets in. Reality becomes distorted, and what they think is true and real might just be figments of their imaginations. It also doesn’t help that music from an unknown source blasts through the gnarly canopy above, leaving them distraught and out of their minds. YellowBrickRoad immerses the audience in the characters’ severe and mentally collapsing mania. It’s not enough that they must combat whatever stretches through the branches and lurches over patches of leaves and dirt, but they learn that conflicts among them could turn deadly at any moment.
Holland and Mitton, who also penned the script, lift various pieces of lore from The Wizard of Oz but largely carve out their very own. In pinning the story in the real world, the duo brings out an authentic humanity that’s unlike most public domain horror. These are real people with wants, needs, and desires. When they lose their minds, the viewer becomes truly invested in their fates, no matter how grim or hopeless.
YellowBrickRoad might be 16 years old now, but it feels as fresh and thrilling as upon its initial release. While it’s far from perfect (the pacing could have been tuned up a bit more and better style and flourishes fused into the camera work), it does an admirable job of filtering the story we all know with fresh eyes and understanding of modern horror storytelling. It’s as though Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton looked into the future of the format and decided to completely upend expectations, and they mostly achieved what they set out to do. That should be commended.
