Simply A Masterpiece

One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely Brilliant!

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

I am shocked and confused by such a low rating (4.7 at this time).I am a huge horror fan and have been avidly watching horror movies since I was (probably) way too young for them (by the western standards).After seeing so many horror movies throughout my life, it is really hard for me to be surprised, scared, or intrigued.Yellowbrick road has scared me and scarred me. Some scenes from it I shall never forget.It was subtle at first so the shock effect that came later was profound.Although I am leaving a comment here for people to read,I suggest that if you want to get scared or surprised, do not read the reviews, plot, summary or even keywords.Not just for this movie, but ever.Especially for horror movies.Take a chance.Go into it fresh and with no expectations.In time, you will overcome your need to predict events and twists.I understand that we are all different with different set of experience, emotions or traumas, and what is scary to one, may be ridiculous to the other; I myself don't know precisely what scares me and what will have effect on me.Our fear changes in time and we overcome fear of the dark, bogeyman, serial killer movies, spiders, scary children, ghosts - at some point.I gave this movie an 8, which I rarely ever do, especially for horror movies.This movie is highly underrated and deserves a second watching.Preferably alone, in the dark, with the headphones or good sound system. Don't be afraid to get scared :) I would watch it again (really difficult with horror movies) and I would pay to do so. Great horror movie!Would like to see a sequel.

This was an awesome mind bending movie. Kept you going wanting to see what happens next. Very different idea and concept very refreshing. Makes you think about what you just watched and try to figure It out. I was the whole time waiting for the end to see what happened. The ending could have been better.It wasn't full of gore just right amount. The acting seemed to be pretty good. I will buy DVD for my collection. It earned 7 out of ten. I am pretty hard pleased with todays idea of horror. See the movie. Well worth the watch. Even the acting was better then usual. Total mess with your head flick.

The only thing disturbing about this movie is that someone actually agreed to make it. I understand that it's an independent film, written, directed, and starring first timers, but anyone who read this script had to have known it just wouldn't work! Don't get me wrong, the story they had was extremely solid, and they could have taken it in a million different directions, any other direction than the one they took. The story starts 70 years ago, when an entire town randomly decides to follow a path into the woods and are never heard from again. The FBI investigated, covered up whatever they found, and kept the whole area off limits, until a random group of people decide to investigate for themselves and write a book about their experiences. First of all, this group of people have no connection to the town, people, or even each other, so why do this? Second, for 70 years the FBI has kept the area off limits to everyone, so what makes this group so special? These idiots march into the woods and the only thing they find is music playing, music that gets progressively louder until it drives them insane. The music is from the Wizard of Oz, but the producers were too cheap to buy the rights to the music from the Wizard of Oz, so it's very similar melodies with different words that nearly drove me to insanity. These idiots romp through the woods makes the Blair Witch Project look like an Oscar worthy film by comparison. It's a lot of talking, and crying, and yelling, that leads to an ending that is by far one of the dumbest things I have ever seen. The ending is the strangest part of all, in that it builds up and plays like it's some huge twist, which maybe it would have been had it made any sense at all. The acting was terrible, the direction was all over the place, and the film destroys the story worst than Paula Deen destroyed her career. This is one film you should absolutely avoid!

I originally made this post in the comments over at weirdfictionreview.com but thought I'd add an updated version here in hopes of creating an analysis thread for anyone that wants to contribute. This movie is up on Netflix right now (May 2013), so I urge all horror fans to go check it out, as it's one of the most disturbing films on there.*****YellowBrickRoad is a gem of a horror film. No movie has really stayed with me (read: disturbed me) this much since the original Hostel. If you're a fan of the genre you owe it to yourself to check it out. That said, there are indeed a lot of pieces that remain unexplained, but I'll offer my take on some of these things in hopes there is some discussion about it (there is not a whole lot of analysis online about this film).The ending: I've noticed that this seems to be the most polarizing aspect of the film for viewers; the ending is somewhat open-ended and that is hard for many people to take. Ultimately, the movie theater scene is indeed a reflection of the pre-war era the disappeared townsfolk lived in (the countdown has an emergency broadcast system alert sound, the burnt landscape is that of a bomb ravaged landscape). But the point may have been that the road started and ended at the movie theater. It could suggest the mindset of the townsfolk in the 40's, which are that all roads lead to destruction, and such destruction is caused by no one but ourselves. So in some ways, this is a commentary on man and his role in war as a tool for self-destruction.The record theme: the group hears music throughout, but at some points, as the volume increases, the sound skips like a needle skipping on a record. Daryl, the map-making brother, states at one point that the landscape is a spiral and that they were heading toward an epicenter. This is not unlike a vinyl record; in this case the landscape reflects the grooves on such a record. It seems to me that if we visualize the group walking across a giant vinyl record with a needle on it, the music would get louder as they approach the needle, and if they interrupt the needle (like a piece of dust might do on the surface of a record), the sound will skip. So it's almost as if they were working their way toward the center of a giant record on a player. Another suggestion of the vinyl metaphor: just before the insane leg scene, Daryl keeps asking his sis "is it scratched?" — a big concern with vinyl records. When a record gets scratched, it is never the same — following this critical turning point in the film, no one in the group is the same.The hat: my guess is that the hat is what drove Daryl insane ahead of the others. It's clear that some kind of spirit(s) exist in the forest, some of them likely those of the townsfolk. So the hat could act as a conduit, or an express route to insanity.The gloved hand dragging the body away: correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the red coat and white gloves the uniform that the flying monkeys wear in Wizard of Oz? If so, this suggests that the malicious spirits in the forest (maybe a wicked witch?) playing the music were some kind of siren song, created in order to draw the townsfolk in and devour their souls (or whatever malicious spirits do). Since Wizard of Oz was an town-wide obsession, the malicious spirit figured that embodying the music and characters from WOO would be the best bait to get everyone up there. The townsfolk probably thought they had found their path to the Emerald City when the heard the music, and they made a beeline for it. Unfortunately it was just a ruse by the witch.There is also a possibility that everyone was having a group hallucination based on consuming berries, and everything was imagined, much like Dorothy wakes up at the end of Wizard of Oz only to discover it was all a dream. The hallucination theory is also similar to Alice in Wonderland, to which I think some of YellowBrickRoad's themes owe to.Would love to hear other interpretations of this. Anyone agree or disagree?