Film Review: YELLOWBRICKROAD (2010)

In 1940 the entire population of Friar, New Hampshire - over 550 people, walked into the wilderness together and vanished without a trace.  It is the present day and a writer and his crew of dedicated individuals have decided to walk the same path as those people in the hopes of discovering what truly happened to those people in 1940 whether it kills them or not.  This is the premise of YellowBrickRoad (2010).  

 

The film is part survival film and part road trip (only in the woods) and part paranoid psychological thriller.  As the writer and his group travel deeper into the woods following the so-called “yellow brick road” to a destination none of them are aware of their minds start to unwind and cripple under the stress until they start to turn on each other.  Now they must decide whether to continue to the end of their journey at which point the truth may kill them or turn back and never know the truth and let it haunt them forever.

As a psychological thriller it works really well as the first half of the film does a great job in setting up the premise of the film as well as establishing the characters and their relationships and their faults which may lead to their downfall.  Ultimately, those looking for a run-of-the-mill horror film will be in for a surprise as this is a slow burning film as friendships and alliances slowly break down until only paranoia is left.  There are a few gory moments but these add punch to the progression of the film without taking over or becoming a distraction.

Written and directed by Jesse Holland and Andy Milton the film is actually better than expected with solid performances by a very good ensemble cast.  This is one of those rare indie horror films that is worth the price of admission.

Film Review: THE CORRIDOR (2010)

Death can cause childhood trauma that can stay with a person until that person either overcomes it or it consumes them.  This is what happens when a group of high school friends get together for a retreat in order to help one of them get over the unusual death of his mother which left him briefly in a hospital.  Once at this cabin in the middle of nowhere the men discover something unnatural just within the woods – an almost invisible corridor.  In The Corridor (2010) these four friends discover an anomaly in the woods that causes minute changes in their physiology.  It starts to drive them unstable and they are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the corridor a secret from outsiders but time is running out as the corridor grows larger consuming everything in its path.

 

The people trapped in the cabin with an exterior force on the other side of the door is something made infamous through The Evil Dead (1981) and for which has been often copied time and time again.  Although this is the set up for this film it detours significantly as this corridor is harmless until the four friends decide to keep it for themselves and then things start to take a turn for the worse as each turn on others and themselves leading to a bloody ending.

The film holds its own as a film about the mental breakdown of the characters and the effects of true friendship against all odds.  For some it may go too extreme in the third act as there is a lot of bloodshed but fans of horror will not be disappointed.  If anything, horror fans will be dismayed with the type of film this is as it starts off as a drama then goes into sci-fi territory before ending on a very gory horror note.  For those looking for something a little different this might be right up your alley.

Film Review: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: RESURRECTION (2013)

The name Night of the Living Dead first brings to mind the 1968 original film from George A. Romero but due to a clerical error that film was not copyright correctly and now tons of film-makers think they can go out there and make a film based on the characters and/or plot of the film.  Among some of these titles is the animated version NOTLD: Reanimated (2010), and NOTLD: 3D (2006) version and its sequel Re-Animation (2012) and not to mention the John Russo 30^th Anniversary Edition (1999), which adds new footage to the old ’68 version.  So it should come as no surprise that this new version Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection (2013) has emerged and it takes place somewhere in the UK (as the characters all have a British accent).

 

This film actually starts off in an interesting manner in which the character of Ben witnesses some violence by some street kids before realizing that something wrong is definitely going on.  He flees the city in search of a safe place but encounters a farm house where a family resides that will protect everything that is theirs both from the zombie menace outside and the more human monsters that exist as the world crumbles in chaos.

Now this all makes the film actually sound better than it is.  In fact, the film is a complete travesty of cinematic film-making.  Written by Andrew Jones and James Plumb (who also directs) this film is hampered by a bad script with bad dialogue and inane motivations by all the characters.  Characters continue to make one bad decision after another that will leave you wanting to kill them all yourself rather than wait for a zombie to reappear or the chaos within the house to erupt.

There is nothing to recommend this film as it is a complete waste of time and a mockery of the name Night of the Living Dead.

Film Review: ABSENTIA (2011)

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a film is going to be good by just watching the first ten minutes.  I have many associates who say that if a book or a film doesn’t capture their attention within the first 50 pages or ten minutes they’ll just tune out or stop altogether missing what could be a genuinely good book or film.  This was my impression of Absentia (2011) which starts off very mundane and incidental.

Absentia concerns sisters Tricia and Callie (Courtney Bell and Katie Parker, respectfully) who are reunited after not having seen each other for years.  Callie has been traveling trying to find her place in the world when she returns home to her sister whose husband mysteriously disappeared years earlier and she is trying to legally have him declared dead in absentia.  Just when Tricia is finally getting over the disappearance of her husband and building a new relationship with her sister Callie her husband mysteriously returns.  He is disoriented, dehydrated, and exhausted as if he had been under some sort of unique captivity and torture.  The only thing Tricia’s husband keeps rambling about is the tunnel by their home.

This rambling about the tunnel near their home leads Callie to start investigating and she discovers that their neighborhood is a place of many disappearances and she believes that a bum that she saw in the tunnel may have also been another one of these people that have gone missing.  Now she must discover the truth about her brother-in-law and the tunnel before whatever happened in the tunnel happens to her as well.

For most of the film’s running time it appears like a run-of-mill slow burning drama but things get a little more supernatural during the last third of the film with barely a hint of what is to come.  This may turn off a few viewers who want things to happen faster but I enjoy the slow burn which allows the viewer to get to know the characters before things get really weird and even more exciting.

Absentia is not an easy film to categorize as it strives very hard to present a film very much in the tradition of a Twilight Zone episode that doesn’t rely on the overtly supernatural but does contain those subtle touches that by the end will completely satisfy even the most jaded of audience member.

Film Review: NINE DEAD (2010)

Sticking a bunch of seemingly strangers in a single room and making them discover how each of them is connected before they are each killed by an unknown person is a very common set up for indie films seeking to use very few locations.  It all started off with Saw (2004), although truth is known it was Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, and has now become its own sub-genre of horror film.  This is where the film Nine Dead (2010) lies except it is neither interesting nor affective as that film.

The film concerns nine strangers who are kidnapped by a masked man and held captive in an underground location.  They are forced to uncover how they are all connected while one of them is killed every ten minutes.  Sounds like an interesting premise? Not really, the film relies on haphazard flashbacks and unconvincing tension between characters to keep the film moving forward in the face of a pretty unbelievable premise.

The biggest problem with the film is the fact that once all the pieces of the puzzle start to take shape you realize how improbable and ludicrous the circumstances are as well as how the killer/kidnapper could ever know all the details himself (unless he was psychic).  The flashbacks are sporadic and never completely relevant to the whole story as many times they show incidental moments instead of pertinent ones.  As written by Patrick W. Mahoney and directed by Chris Shadley the film never strives to be anything other than derivative lacking the punch and drive of the film it so desperately tries to emulate.