Konterr
Brilliant and touching
Glimmerubro
It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.
Tobias Burrows
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
ebossert
This film by Yam Laranas ("The Echo") is divided into three segments. The first story concerns three young teenagers who drive down a desolate road at night, not knowing that it is haunted. This is a very cool, lengthy sequence with some nasty looking ghouls. The atmosphere is dense and the scare tactics are nicely crafted. The next two stories are flashbacks that show the historical acts of violence that are connected to the hauntings. The style here feels like a modern French horror film. It's very professional, with great photography, very eerie scoring, and solid performances. No humor or stupid one-liners to be found here. The deliberate pacing and gloomy mood will likely wear viewers down, which is a trait that I find to be a very positive thing. I strongly recommend this.On a side note, I find it somewhat annoying that this film has such a low IMDb rating and such negative reviews. In a day and age where crap like "The House of the Devil" (2009) and "Insidious" (2010) are praised and hyped as new genre classics, I guess I shouldn't be surprised when a genuinely strong horror film like "The Road" (2011) is derided and criticized for being "too slow." Perhaps a few dozen cheap jump scares or some graphic violence would have sufficed to keep our attention deficient audiences awake. For goodness sakes, "Rob Zombie's Halloween" is currently rated higher than "The Road." Yeah . . . okay.
ryandannar
I wish "The Road" was a better movie. It's based on a neat idea, and has the bones of what could make for a terrifying and fairly epic horror story. Unfortunately, the film is undone by dumb dialog, clunky editing, an underdeveloped script, laughably thin characters, and bad acting.The neat idea? A haunting in present-day, which claims the lives of three teens in the film's first section, is revealed to be caused by events which occurred a decade previous in the film's second section. But those events which caused the haunting weren't without their own causes. We see a young man kidnap and murder two girls, but it's obvious there's something more at play; he seems to respond to a presence the girls don't see. And so, in the film's final third, we jump back in time yet another decade, and discover how the young man of part 2 was driven to violent madness by an abusive mother and an ineffectual father.The recursive nature of this tale provokes some thought. It depicts a cycle of violence which spans generations, and leaves a dark spiritual footprint on a place. There's a poetic quality in that. It leads one to wonder, how far back does the violence actually go? Could we jump back yet another generation, and discover the horrifying circumstances that made the abusive mother into the monster she's shown to be? And from there, beyond? One imagines a chain of evil, begat at the dawn of time, handed down through generations, each generation damaging the next and thus forging the next dark link in the chain. There is no beginning; there is no end.Or something like that. These were the thoughts this film inspired in me. It's unfortunate, then, that it's not a better movie. The cinematography is competent and creepy, the lighting is never bad, and the sound effects were passable. Fortunately, those things count for a lot, and they made the movie watchable.Where the film falls down the most is in the script. These characters just aren't fleshed-out at all. There's a cop in the present-day section who is trying to piece-together the mystery, and his character is so thinly-defined as "Hero Cop" that I imagine that's what his name was in the script. It becomes unintentionally funny.There's also, I think, a big problem with the young man who was cast to play the killer in the film's second section. I understand what the filmmakers were going for -- I believe they wanted a timid sort of guy who is driven to murder girls because of his mother's tormenting voice in his head. Sort of a Norman Bates persona. Unfortunately, the guy cast in this role is just an average-looking, clean-cut, blank-faced boy of about 17. He doesn't have a threatening frame; he's not "big" enough to be imposing; it's not believable that this guy could knock a girl out in one sideways punch, as he's shown to do. His shirt and jeans look too laundered; the grease and blood that accumulate on him over the course of the film look like makeup; he never actually looks dirty or disturbed or mad. He looks like a guy who would be much rather be playing XBox in his bedroom then murdering girls. I just didn't buy his performance at all, not for a second. I hesitate to even call it a performance. I don't think the actor understood how to play this role. He's utterly unbelievable.Anyway, those are the film's strengths and its biggest weaknesses. It's not a total waste of time. It's just a shame it isn't better.
Shane Carl Montefalcon
THE ROAD was somewhat great in a mediocre way.The story was beyond compelling and interesting. Critics says that the movie is scary but I disagree. The movie wasn't scary, it was just creepy and mind-disturbing.The 3 parts of the movie, which is in backwards chronology, will keep you up in your seat. But to enjoy this movie, you have to be a keen observer about the details of the story.Some says that the movie was a big plot hole, but it's not.If you're filipino like me, you would relate to the story and not say that it's a plot hole. You just need to understand the movie more. There was no plot hole. Every question of the movie was answered in the end.It was scary though, for filipinos like me, because mostly everyday, these things happen to us (people get lost, get killed, they turn to ghost and stuff) because in Philippines, we do believe in this stuff and there are big chances for these things to happen to us because Philippines is one big ball of mischief and horror. the script and the acting were both mediocre and a little bit lousy, Overall, the movie was great, the story was well build, the cinematography was beyond amazing and the movie itself was in a powerful premise which was powerful enough to compel foreign viewers.I give this movie a decent 7 out of 10
naff-sound
"The Road" tells the story of violent occurrences on a stretch of an abandoned road over a timespan of 20 years. It is divided in 3 Chapters, each then years apart. The chapters are interconnected, the whole story unfolding with the third episode. The storyline moves back in time - it therefore starts with the most recent occurrence in 2008 and depicts then the incident of 1998. Finally it connects the lose strands left by the two previous episodes by showing us what happened in 1988.Good things first: the sonic ambiance, the score if you like, is great. It pushes expectations right from the start. Bad thing : it is utterly wasted on this film. I don't want to go deep into the tremendous holes in the storyline, illogical behavior all around and very cheap and sententious depiction of the development of a psychological illness. It's enough that you know that these are annoyingly obvious even for a genre that thrives on them. The real pain of the movie is the acting. The first two chapters have a cast from the Children's Hospital of the Terminally Talentless! The script lets 16 year olds act like toddlers. The dialogs are horrible. They are like an audio summary for the blind: never telling more than the absolute obvious. While I do think it refreshing if a horror movie for once doesn't exploit violence and gore, this movie is not giving a valuable solution - I have seen more violent fisticuffs in Stan&Laurel movies. The uneasy avoidance of graphic violence while actually implying its existence, leads to ridiculous scenes - like a girl bleeding from a head wound apparently because she fell on a mattress.There is no special twist. It is a well used recipe in filmmaking to divide a movie in several chapters that intertwine and all get connected in the end. This was professionally executed, but without major surprises. The movie in itself is neither scary nor startling or revealing. It develops some more depth with the third chapter, which is so much better than the others that it seems to be from a different director entirely. But too little, too late. 3 Stars because sound and cinematography deserve recognition.
