Movies
Slamdance ’10: First Stills from ‘YellowBrickRoad’
First time filmmakers Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton are ecstatic that their film YellowBrickRoad has been selected for the narrative competition at the prestigious Slamdance Film Festival. Now in its 16th year of championing the best emerging filmmaking talent, Slamdance will be held January 21-28, 2010 in Park City, Utah. Check out some new stills and the trailer below.
Many previous films that have played the festival have gone on to worldwide distribution including this year’s surprise hit, Paranormal Activity. Holland and Mitton would like to see YELLOWBRICKROAD catapult to similar success. “There were so many challenges we faced trying to make the film we wanted to make, that getting the call from Slamdance was like a dream come true. It was a very exhilarating and rewarding feeling,” said Mitton.
YELLOWBRICKROAD tells the story of an expedition that embarks on a mission to solve the mysterious disappearance of the entire population of Friar, New Hampshire, who, in the fall of 1940, walked together up a winding mountain trail and into the wilderness, never to be seen alive again. The only clue left behind was a single word etched into stone near the forest’s edge: YELLOWBRICKROAD. In 2009, the coordinates to the trail were declassified and a team of researchers sets out to find out the truth behind the town’s disappearance. The film stars Cassidy Freeman (Smallville, CSI), Anessa Ramsey (The Signal), Laura Heisler (Numb3rs), Michael Laurino (Past Life), Clark Freeman (Simulacrum), Alex Draper (Joshua), and Lee Wilkof (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead).
The film was the first ever to shoot in the remote forests of northern New Hampshire. The cast and crew had to overcome difficult terrain, sparse electricity and no cell phone reception “Andy and Jesse went to school at Middlebury College in Vermont and they knew these parts of New England really well. They wrote the script with that area in mind, so we had to use it. Basically, we produced a digital movie in an analog terrain,” laughed Producer Eric Hungerford. Despite the difficulties, the filmmakers are very pleased with the end result of using the remote area. “It really adds authenticity to the desolation and isolation that is prevalent in the film,” said Hungerford.
This year’s narrative competition includes 10 films, mixes of comedy, drama and sci fi. “We were inspired by the slow burn horror and suspense films of the 70`s, and really sought to capture a realistic, character driven story while delivering an intense visceral experience,” said Holland. “Slamdance is a great venue for this film and we hope film loving audiences will respond to it the way we do,” said Hungerford. To view the film’s official trailer, please visit the website http://www.yellowbrickroadthemovie.com. The film also has a Facebook page and a Twitter account @yellwbrickroad.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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