Ideas are easy. Writing is hard. That’s why there are so many films with fantastic premises that don’t stick the landing. A case in point is YellowBrickRoad, from writing and directing duo Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton. This film has a strong premise. In 1940, all the residents of the small town of Friar, New Hampshire, decided to walk off into the forest one day, never to be seen alive, again. They left behind everything.
Now, in the present, a small group of researchers has decided to follow in the townsfolk’s footsteps, hiking up the same disused trail, in hopes of discovering just what it was that led them to their doom. They’re looking for a scientific explanation, perhaps based in group psychosis, but are also open to the idea that something supernatural was the cause. Perhaps something, some thing, resides in the pure, untouched wilderness, and lured these townsfolk away from hearth and home.
The expedition is the brainchild of Teddy and Melissa Barnes (Michael Laurino and Anessa Ramsey), who hope to get a book out of the trip, and their psychologist friend, Walter (Alex Draper). Along for the trip are surveyors and mapmakers Erin and Daryl Luger (real-life siblings Cassidy and Clark Freeman), who relish the opportunity to fill in a blank spot on the map; intern Jill (Tara Giordano); Forest Service employee Cy (Sam Elmore), who is acting as a sort of guide and survival expert; and Liv (Laura Heisler), a local from modern day Friar who negotiates a spot on the team in exchange for helping to find the trailhead. The cast thus gathered, it’s off to the woods.
Plenty of spooky shit happens in the North American wilderness on normal days. In horror flicks, the wilderness might as well be the mouth of hell. The possibilities are endless, and horror movies have a rich history of bad things happening in the woods. Many bad things 
happen in this movie, as well. But, no root cause can be determined, and the characters kind of just wander into their problems.
As much psychological horror as supernatural, the greatest threat to the expedition are their own deranged musings, rather than anything malevolent viewers can see. In fact, the only outside menace the group faces is a predilection for the forest to play lots of easily licensed music from the 1930s. These reverb-filled tunes begin to fill the air after the group has spent a day or so in the woods, the source unknown, and is the sole supernatural element of the film. The remainder of the action follows the characters losing their minds, Jack Torrance-like, and the violence that entails. It all leads to an unsatisfying denouement, to swing music accompaniment, that provides no answers, but was never intended to, it seems. There is no lesson to the film other than the characters having made a mistake by walking in the footsteps of all those dead townsfolk. Something, indeed, is up there in the deep, dark woods, but it’s never seen or explained, and there’s never a hint in the film that it will be.
It is possible to make a good film while being ambiguous, but YellowBrickRoad did not manage to do that. Rather, the movie is thin. Thinner than Blair Witch, which at least did a little set dressing. We see the characters lose their sanity over the course of the film, but we have to take their word for it, because, other than the pervasive music, there isn’t a cause. At one point in the film, a character warns another that they have become dangerous. It’s helpful that they pointed out their deteriorating mental condition, but the fact they had to tell another character, and by extension, the viewer, encapsulates this film’s primary weaknesses. Holland and Mitton had to tell us with words what was happening in their movie, because they couldn’t figure out how to show us.
YellowBrickRoad is a movie with little forward motion, ersatz scares, and characters that are unsympathetic. A meteorite vaporizing all of them in the first half hour would have had me more engaged.
Of final note, Robert Eggers, who has since become a wonderful filmmaker, was this movie’s costume designer.