Review by Quin
The further I get from my rebellious teenage years (which, truth be told, weren’t very rebellious at all), the less tolerance I have for the fictionalization of young rebellion on screen. The old man in me is getting stronger every day and he wants to yell out to these kids in all of these movies about how sniffing glue will rot your brain. Just this weekend, I watched the James Franco-penned film Palo Alto and the awkwardness coupled with a stubborn know-it-all attitude made me really annoyed. The very same attitude is on full display in Jason Banker’s low budget film Toad Road – but I stuck with it, and it ended up being an interesting little film about coming of age and an urban legend.
There are too many young people to possibly keep track of in Toad Road. Many of them look the same and most of them act the same. However, they all seem like real kids. I read that director Jason Banker put an ad in the paper asking for kids who were fans of Vice Magazine and wanted to be in a movie. The results he got were brilliant. They all look like they’re right out of a Larry Clark book of photography. The two at the center of the film are Sara and James. James tells Sara about the legend of Toad Road, which she has never heard of before. Sara is a city girl and as James puts it, “It’s a York thing.” He goes on about how years ago there was this mental institution on Toad Road in York, Pennsylvania. Behind the spot where the building once stood is a red gate surrounded by woods. Legend has it that this is the first of seven gates that lead straight to Hell. Oddly enough, the real legend is from a place called Hellam Township (also in Pennsylvania) so I’m guessing the gates just lead to Hellam. Sara is intrigued by the legend and she immediately says she wants to do drugs and explore the area. James, who seems to be thinking about slowing down his party animal lifestyle, warns her that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. They eventually end up there anyway and this is where the film kicks in with the horror. The hike down Toad Road doesn’t begin until the final thirty minutes of the film.
The rest of the film leading up to the exciting part is pretty much just watching all of these kids do ridiculous amounts of drugs. There is also drunkenness, fart lighting, games of Gay Chicken, doing acid in a river, doing mushrooms in a cave, wrestling, bike riding, vomiting and endless humming Sonic Youth-style guitar music. The antics in the film are no different than that of Kids or Gummo. In fact, Mike Spies of vocative.com said that Toad Road was like The Blair Witch Project directed by Harmony Korine – which is a pretty amazing description. Spies has also written a great article on the lead actress in the film that I suggest you all read. It’s called American Ghost Story: The Brief, Eerie Life of Model Sara Anne Jones. Her real story serves as a path that veers off of Toad Road. During the end credits, some text reads: “Dedicated to the memory of Sara Anne Jones.” I immediately thought how weird it was that the main female character’s name was Sara… could this be the same person? This sent me on an internet search that I’m glad I went on. In fact, I think Sara’s story somehow added to Toad Road. You’ll have to see it for yourself to understand what I mean. It’s very sad that she died, but I think you’ll agree that on first glance, it seems very possible that the dedication was something added to make the story scarier. Unfortunately, she really did pass away of an accidental drug overdose, just after the film’s premiere.
If you just want to see a straight up horror movie with gore and monsters and stuff, this isn’t it. Toad Road is a low budget, mostly psychological horror – with that coming-of-age spin that I was talking about before. Think of it as a mumble-core Stand By Me with hard-core (non-straight-edge) East coast kids, and where they all drop acid instead of just smoking cigarettes. But Jason Banker is a talented filmmaker who is more than competent with a less is more kind of approach. If you’re tired of Adam Wingard and his lo-fi horror, then give Banker’s lo-fi Toad Road a chance.
Toad Road is available now on region 1 DVD from SpectreVision (Elijah Wood’s company) and it is streaming on Netflix and Hulu in the US.