Underrated Movie, Slipped Beneath the Radar

It's interesting how some movies, mediocre as they are, somehow succeed in capturing the attention of popular culture and you might say, luck out. This, tragic as it may be, is nowhere near has troublesome to observe as when a movie that is deserving of attention gets very little.

Yellow Brick Road is a movie that represents one such example. Now, I'm not saying most people will enjoy this movie. But the technical nature with which a low budget film can be shot without any lacking features is definitely an accomplishment, and at times the lower budgeted movies can really surprise you because the director had to focus on storyline instead of gimmicks.

One thing I appreciated about Yellow Brick Road was that though it is a horror movie it does not subscribe to torture porn nor does it try to trigger nervous system attacks with quick camera movements or loud noises that litter most modern horror movies. Instead this film tries to creep you out with things that come on rather softly or slowly, almost predictably so.

The scene near the end where Daryl is in the cave and whispers that he is going to kill the girl - this is a great example where the audience is on the edge of their seat and rather than be jolted out of it by a sudden rush, they are instead forced to sink in it as they absorb the terror of the moment, just as the character does.

But none of this really underlines the true merit of this movie. After you watch it you don't really understand why it has freaked you out. From the advent of it with the eerie voice recordings of past to the hellish declaration in the theater at the end, there is an underlying creep factor that seems to coat the very notion of hope - it is as if the Yellow Brick Road is a form of punishment, purgatory before a necessary hell, not for some personal or selfish evil, but punishing the victims simply for being foolish enough to seek solace within it.

It is as if it was always evil and felt it necessary to punish anyone who viewed it in any other way in the most horrible of manners in order to vindicate how truly evil it was, to help those who were mistaken about its nature to fully understand the immense nature of their mistake.

It does this by making you forget everything else, and simultaneously hate and love the Road, like an addiction of sorts, and suffer the ultimate consequence of that addiction.

In the end, I felt, all its victims came to it - it did not go to them.