Movies
[BD Review] ‘The Road’ Is A Chilling And Effective Ride
Writer/director Yam Laranas’ The Road is a surprisingly effective film whose biggest asset is perhaps how comfortable it feels in its own skin. It’s not without the occasional misstep, but it has the confidence to recognize its own assets and be patient with them – doling out scares, shocks and kills at a measured pace that maximizes their impact. Structured as a self contained trilogy, it contains three separate stories that are connected and build upon each other in every way but unfold in a non-linear fashion. It may sound like a lot for a low-budget horror film from the Philippines to juggle, but it’s all pulled off rather nicely.
The film starts off almost like an Amblin movie. Three teenagers – embroiled in a bit of a love triangle on the verge of outgrowing its chastity – boost one of their parents’ cars and head out on an abandoned dirt road. How abandoned is the road? It’s locked, private. Dark. Unpopulated. As is the case in these scenarios, you almost want to scream, “don’t go in there!” But Laranas has already done such a good job establishing the dynamic within this group of friends that you totally buy the dare factor in their venture into the unknown.
The film starts at a languid pace and maintains it, and if you’re not caught up in the inherent suspense it might be a little frustrating waiting for something to happen – but when it happens you’re hooked. The tension displayed in this first act is fairly remarkable. It fully develops every one of the limited amount of means at its disposal. Three kids. A mystery car. The road. The dark. A ghost. And by the end you’re rattled and hooked into the remaining two acts of the film – which significantly expand its scope.
As The Road moves along it focusses on other characters, a police office, a mother, a young boy. Again, their relevance to the central story is slowly revealed, but Laranas has the rare gift of making the viewer feel comfortable not knowing. You realize that you’re in safe hands and recognize that you won’t be let down if you allow yourself to go along for the ride.
A lot of this assuredness makes its way to the screen in other, more immediate, ways. Laranas shot the film himself, and though he might not have the same tools at his disposal as Terence Malick or Andrew Dominik (and to be fair the level of his craft has not yet approached the level of theirs) – his eye aspires to the same school of composition. Beautiful shots of the surrounding countryside provide a nice counterpoint and aesthetic anchor to the horrors unfolding.
Speaking of horrors, there’s a number of them. The bloody bag used in the promos figures heavily, and the film isn’t short on brutality. But one of the film’s most effective and terrifying moments takes place in broad daylight in an unassuming shot. The matter-of-factness with which the violence is treated renders it almost as horrifying as the shot where Leatherface slams the metal door shut in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The Road loses some ground in its final moments, and there’s a requiem for a character that does’t quite feel earned. But aside from some mild hiccups, its tone is fairly constant and it’s never less than engaging. If you go into it with an open mind and are prepared to be patient, it’s a trip well worth taking.
8/10
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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