clareparkinson788 The movie is about a group of people who walk a trail and go missing, so another group of people walk the trail to find out what happened. Pretty simple plot. However despite the movie being laid out as a horror, there really is no narrative. No story line as such. It is more a metaphorical look at how we constantly strive to reach the unattainable. There is not a lot of focus on the script, instead the score provides more insight into what the characters are going through and it works well. I had a hard time rating this movie, I really loved what they were trying to do but I felt it was missing a little something. Perhaps because the ending felt a little unrewarding. Definitely worth the watch if you like something a little different, but not for everybody.

alettahendrikx I really enjoyed this movie. Saw it twice within a month and it still leaves me with questions. Not an average horror movie but still some blood in it. As a group filmmakers sets for the woods behind a movie theater, to find out what happened to a whole town that died in the wilderness, they are up for some disorientation.The setting, but also the old, yet slightly disturbing music, makes this movie a classic in its own, small genre. The themes from the Wizard of Oz comes in quit more then you think. I absolutely loved this one. Also reminded me in some way of the Shining.If you like this one, go for Triangle as well.

luke I totally understand why people may not like this. Its clearly low budget, the effects arn't amazing and it is fairly slow at times, run time says something like 96 minutes but it did feel longer for me.The reason I gave this a 10 was to A) balance out the ratings and B) because genuinely I loved it so much I felt I had to get a review on here! Unlike others I liked the characters, they were not teenage douchebags. They were funny at times, they kept my attention and I found them believable. In no way did this movie go down clichéd roads, it kept me guessing. Normally with these type of slow building movies the ending disappoints. For me everything was tied up nicely and despite the fact the film felt as though it dragged the ending totally made it worth If you don't expect too much and have the patience for this type of psychological movie then you may just be rewarded with refreshing, original ideas and a great film that Im very happy to own!

stumbleman I originally made this post in the comments over at weirdfictionreview.com but thought I'd add an updated version here in hopes of creating an analysis thread for anyone that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?