If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then Yellow Brick Road is paved with potential… well the first few feet anyways. Yellow Brick Road suffers from using the “open ended”, choose-your-own-adventure convention that at this point is just tired and unnecessary. Its almost as if the filmmakers haven’t seen all the films that follow the same template as their own, because if they had, well… its like showin up for the big gala and “hellz no… do not tell me that bitch is wearin the same little black dress that I am!!!!”… embarrasing. That’s how YBR plays out… its just hard to believe the filmmakers didn’t give their audience enough credit to realize that we’ve seen this all before.. AND… its a pity because during the first few minutes… it actually feels pretty fresh… and admittedly, I had my hopes high. YBR starts off by setting up a story concerning a town whose residents took off “walking” only to end up dead or their whereabouts unknown. A photographer and novelist (Michael Laurino), fascinated with the tale finally receives the info he has been waiting for to pursue the story along with his wife and best friend. He takes off, employing guides and interns to get to the bottom of the mystery. End the interesting part of this film. Enter a discombobulated and often times boring script that made me also want to to go for a walk… a long walk until I saw the credits. I really hate to be this critical of YBR, but dammit, there was just so much potential here that I just can’t excuse the execution. We had a mystery that was a tantalizing enough selling point, a well rounded cast, that, with a couple of exceptions, kept the acting above par… BUT… despite a rather brutal dismemberment sequence, this movie just felt trapped in stasis. Even when the story pushed forward the pace was so staggeringly slow that any pivotal events were too scarce to make you care. The horror here is VERY mild, and pretty non existent for the most part. Is YBR a horrible film? No. Its actually, technically, an alright picture. If you’re a film student and have some time on your hands… and possibly, some thorazine to reach the film’s pace.. have at it Tyler (because for some reason I think that most film students are either named Tyler or Brendan these days… possibly Keiran) Kick off your Birkenstocks, sift through the seeds and stems of the ditch weed your Art History major fuck buddy girlfriend with the chinese ideogram on the nape of her neck left at your place after the Phish cover band concert and take some notes for your final. It just feels unrealized and underdeveloped. Unfortunately, that actually lumps it into a category that unfairly puts it beside far lesser films.
