YellowBrickRoad

  One morning in 1940 the entire population of a remote New Hampshire town walked North up an unmarked trail, into the wilderness. Only one of them came back, and only a few corpses were found - slaughtered or frozen to death. Or so the opening blurb for horror movie YellowBrickRoad (stylized in all caps, but I don't feel like screaming) would have us believe.

 Seventy years later, three professors (Michael Laurino, Anessa Ramsey and Alex Draper) manage to receive the case files and decide that there might be a book in that old unsolved mystery. They mount an expedition to find the trail and see what might be found, enlisting some help to do so: two sibling cartographers (real-life siblings Clark and Cassidy Freeman) and their intern (Tara Giordano), plus a park ranger (Sam Elmore).

 With the help of a local (Laura Heisler) who insinuates herself into the group, they find the trailhead and start heading up north and strangeness ensues. Subtle at first; GPS malfunctions, impossible map readings, and an old timey melody wafting up from the woods. Soon the music gets a lot louder, though, and our intrepid explorers are driven to murder. Silly, silly murder.

 It's a decent stab at an indie horror flick, a nasty foray into the unexplainable that does a lot with its limited budget. The writer/Directing team of Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland keep things moving and, while a lot of the material feels overtly familiar, there are some fun digressions and some depth to the characterization. The acting is very decent, too.

 But in the end, there's just not enough of anything here; The mysteries are intriguing, and I respect that the film refuses to explain anything away. But I didn't find the strangeness particularly satisfying, either - there's no strong central concept nor a good thematic hook for the modest mayhem that the protagonists get up to. The lack of a proper budget hurts the few scenes that call for special effects, and the actors sadly do not sell what little action there is, especially a neck snapping - a shame, because the scene as written should be pretty upsetting.

 Although YellowBrickRoad takes a few cues from The Blair Witch Project, it doesn't use the first-person gimmick - it looks very professional, though the washed-out palette and crisp digital cinematography (by Michael Hardwick) didn't do a lot for me. Robert Eggers did uncredited work on the design and costume department, though to be honest none of it really registered. Still - his first proper movie!

 The directors would go on to make We Go On together in 2016, which looks interesting, and then they split. Mitton made the excellent The Witch in the Window and The Harbinger. Holland did The Crooked Man, which seems like a goofy Nightmare on Elm Street clone with  Michael Jai White in a Loomis role; I am so up for that.

 And here's a cute detail: Andy Mitton is (or was) in a band called The Real d'Coy along with the two cartographer siblings from the movie (Clark and Cassidy Freeman). Indie rock, of course; If I had to describe it in one word it'd be 'pleasant'.

 This is not a bad debut, and I'm glad it launched at least a few interesting careers.