Contains midpoint SPOILERS.

The movie starts out as a black and white documentary about an incident in 1940 where a village/town of people all take off walking down a trail. Only one person survived and he was a bit crazy. Bodies were found along the trail, many more missing.

Years later Teddy Barnes, teacher and writer (Michael Laurino) manages to obtain the records and decides to investigate in order to publish a book. The team goes to the co-ordinates of the trail head only to find a movie theater. Teddy decides to go into the theater and talk to the counter girl/projectionist who tells him a bizarre tale of how the original Oz movie was playing at the time of the incident. She (Laura Heisler) is over eager to help them go down the Yellow Brick Road, a sign that marks the trial.

She takes them to the trail. There is a psychologist(Alex Draper) on the trip who is constantly filming individuals and asking them questions as a sanity check. This gives the movie the annoying feel of those reality type movies. Also in the team is his wife Melissa (Anessa Ramsey) and Daryl and Erin Luger (Clark Freeman and Cassidy Freeman). Cy (Sam Elmore) and Jill (Tara Giordano) round out the team as they head on down the trail laced with belladonna. The movie develops slowly as small things happen. Daryl finds a hat that is from the era, but seems new. Jill's GPS goes haywire, one minute they are in Guam, the next Italy. They joke about it.

They hike for five days in Northern NH (is that possible?) Their instruments are not working properly and they know something is at work, but what? They speculate: Solar flares? Earth magnetism? Government experiment? Emotions flare...

Good acting. Nice New England accent by Laura Heisler. I enjoy horror/mystery/thrillers and this one was exceptionally good, even though the ending didn't offer any closure.

Parental Guide: F-bomb, sex, no nudity.

YELLOWBRICKROAD is really uneven. A stunning period set up (a town in New Hampshire walked into the woods in 1940, many never to return, some were found dead and with only a sole survivor. In 2010 the documents on the event are declassified and some people stupidly head into the woods on what is called the Yellowbrickroad.

For me the first half of the film is really good. As the group wanders into the wilderness a great tension is built up.

The trouble is the film swerves into even stranger territory once the bodies start piling up (for no real reason except to get us toward the end) and the film deteriorates despite the fact that there are some truly amazing sequences. The film, like the films it echoes (Stalker, R-Point, The Bunker and a few others) simply gets to a point where the weirdness can't be sustained, partly because it looses internal logic and partly because it becomes clear it has no way to bring it all together in an ending that works. Worse the film splits the group up into parts and the further fractures of the plot line weaken things further. Yes, the film continues to amaze on an individual scene basis it unfortunately never hangs together with the final denouncement being less than it could have been (though it has a wicked final image). I love the parts- they just never put it together with the result it all falls down.

I need to say that the sound design of this film is one of the most amazing I've ever seen. Its a reason to see this in a good theater on a big screen simply because I have yet to see a home theater system that will ever match seeing this in a theater. Basically if you can't see this with a great sound system the film's audio track will have little effect on you and weaken an already tenuous second half.

Pretentious amateur attempt at an ambiguous horror movie. I hate crap like this. It's not intelligent. It's not thought-provoking. It's not original. The filmmakers wanted so badly for it to be a memorable and enigmatic film that they forgot to make it a good one. It's a boring chore to sit through that has ZERO scares and no atmosphere. There are a couple of moments you have to laugh at the ineptitude of it but that's the closest thing to a positive reaction it got from me.

I only saw this because of Cassidy Freeman, who I was familiar with from Smallville. Being the only person with any "name" in the cast, she is advertised as though she were the star. She most definitely is not. She's in a minor supporting role and is killed off fairly early. But she provides this boring mess of a film's only highlight: the most ridiculous death scene in movie history. I can't believe they were serious with that. Avoid this garbage at all costs.