The Road

Plot synopsis:
A father and his young son journey across post-apocalyptic America some years after an extinction event. Their names are never revealed in the story. The land is covered with ash and devoid of life. The boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the disaster, committed suicide shortly after giving birth.
Realizing they cannot survive the winter, the man takes the boy south along empty roads towards the sea, carrying their meager possessions in their knapsacks and a supermarket cart. The man is suffering from a serious cough and knows he is dying. He assures his son that they are "good guys" who are "carrying the fire". The pair have a revolver, but only two rounds. The father has taught the boy to use the gun on himself if necessary, to avoid falling into the hands of cannibals.
The father uses one of the rounds to kill a marauder who discovers them, disturbing the boy. They flee the marauder's companions, abandoning most of their possessions. When they search a house for supplies, they discover a locked cellar containing captives whom cannibal gangs have been eating limb by limb, and flee into the woods.
As they are near starvation, the pair discover a concealed bunker filled with food, clothes, and other supplies. They stay there for several days, regaining their strength, and then move on, taking lots of supplies from the bunker with them. They encounter an elderly man with whom the boy insists they share food. Further along the road, they evade a group whose members include a pregnant woman, and soon after they discover a newborn infant roasted on a spit. They come to a house where they find more food and a wheelbarrow they use to carry their supplies, but the man's condition is worsening.
The pair reaches the beach, where they see a boat drifting out at sea. The man swims to it and recovers supplies, including a flare gun, which he demonstrates to the boy. After their wheelbarrow is stolen, they desperately look for it and those who took it. After finding a single man with the wheelbarrow, the father forces him to strip naked. After this distresses the boy, he leaves the clothes on the road with a can of food, in hopes the man will find it.
In a town inland, the man is shot in the leg with an arrow by a husband and wife. After the man kills the husband with the flare gun, the pair move further south along the beach. The man loses a lot of blood and, after several days, realizes he will soon die. He tells the boy he can talk to him in prayer after he is gone, and that he must continue without him. After he dies, the boy stays with his body for three days. He is finally approached by a man carrying a shotgun, who has a wife and two children, a boy and a girl. He convinces the boy he is one of the "good guys", and after helping the boy bury his father on the beach, takes him under his protection.

Tags: murder

Review:
It starts in 2008 when three youngsters were terrorized by a driver-less red car one night when they happened to pick this particular road on which to practice driving.
The story shifts to 1998, when two sisters (one of them Rhian Ramos) whose red car overheated on that same road, only to fall victims to a quiet but mentally-disturbed teenage boy (Alden Richards) who had unspeakable violent tendencies.
But I say, do not think too much, let the eerie atmosphere envelop you as director Yam Laranas tells you his stories with his well-placed camera angles and effects, as well at the amazing lighting of scenes.
While the more senior actors like Carmina Villaroel, Marvin Agustin, TJ Trinidad and Rhian Ramos expectedly did well in their respective roles, I was most impressed with the talent of Renz Valerio, the child actor who played the boy in the third part.
"The Road" is a definite must-watch for horror movie fans!.
The Road is very satisfying and I highly recommend it if you like the slow burn and creepy movies.
This is my first to see movie where genre is somewhat crossing-over from horror to thriller to suspense to drama.
I wished I've seen this in the big screen though.When suddenly you think the story is predictable, the director brings you to unexpected "turns" and "detours".
It's amazing how some story points and questions are answered by each chapter of the movie.
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.
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.
An off-beat and gripping Filipino ghost tale.It is essentially a sort of Pinoy Norman Bates story told in retrospective spanning two decades, with heavy amount of supernatural and sufficiently creepy elements thrown in for a good reason.The yarn is simply structured and easy to follow.
Overall, in my opinion, the film has balanced mix of mystery, horror, drama ...
However, after the first segment, the film gets noticeably less exciting as we're given more backstory and information to solve the whole mystery surrounding the story.
Still, there is a satisfying payoff by the end as everything falls into place as well as unexpected emotional pathos rarely seen in horror films.
And with films from ASEAN from The Raid to The Collector gaining prominence everywhere, it's only time to add Philippine Cinema to the list.It's true that indie or art-house films from the Philippines do make it to film festivals here, but for the mass market audience, The Road is perhaps one of the earliest to hit commercial cinemas here in a long while, as far as my memory serves.
And what better way than for a horror film to try and open up the doors, one that features an ensemble cast of stars with idol looks to spark an interest, besides providing Filipinos here with something from home.
But as with most horror films around the region, it's usually touch and go basis, and The Road, boasted for getting itself a US distribution, it's somewhat of a roller coaster ride with its fair share of creepy moments, ultimately done in via a runtime that artificially sustained a thin plot.Written and directed by Yam Laranas, The Road is actually made up of three story arcs each set in a different time line separated by a decade each, and linking them is the titular road along which something strange and macabre even that had happened in a dilapidated house found along it, together with an abandoned car.
The opening shot, pardon the pun, set the stage for an epic mystery to be unravelled, with the stage set for a hot shot cop Luis (TJ Trinidad), decorated with a medal for his string of successful case closures, to prove himself in the series of events that follow.In the first arc, three friends go out for an illegal joyride, making a detour into The Road to avoid a police roadblock, and in what would be a case of bad luck, encounter ghouls that seem to be stuck in groundhog day fashion, repetitive hauntings of the trio.
This arc was more teenage drama before the effects and make up crew shifted gears and made it their own toward the end.The second arc tried to become a mini outing along the torture porn genre, but unfortunately with the more violent offering in practically every film in the genre, this arc turned out to be rather tame, with a man inexplicably hammering his victims, two sisters, away without remorse or reason, making it a battle for survival against complete madness.
We know who's alive and who's not from the earlier arc, and the narrative really took its time to get there.But thankfully, the redeeming factor came from the third act.
While it didn't offer anything we don't know about nor new in the narrative sense with similar themes being explored before in other films, and tosses up some more questions than answers, it is the actors here delivering better performances from the rest, and a story that's set against a dysfunctional family, that showed of Laranas' strength in storytelling.
By now you'd realize that Laranas rarely dips into the oft used box of the same old techniques used to scare audiences with quick jump cuts and edits, preferring to let the camera take its time in revealing presence that's spot on in creating both suspense, and eerie atmosphere.The Road plays on the gimmick of having a horror film told from three expanded story arcs with common characters linking them all together, and in essence scores in its effort.
However, horror film fans with a penchant for the same old boo scare tactics dished out by filmmakers may find this a little bit sterile.
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.
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.
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.
"The Road" is an odd mix of crime, horror and drama, with an end result that is actually worth watching.
The movie is fairly average, but it does have some pretty interesting moments here and there.What I enjoyed about the movie was that the movie backtracked, taking us backward in time to the things leading up to the things that happened in the beginning of the movie.
That was a pretty good move on director Yam Laranas behalf - sort of like the way the Korean movie "Peppermint Candy" was built up, and it worked out quite nicely for the overall flow of the movie.As for being a Tagalog (Philippine) horror movie, well then I must say that I didn't find the movie overly scary, but then again I am not really familiar with Tagalog movies, so I don't really have anything to compare this with.
However, compared to the many Korean and Japanese horror movies, this was like a picnic in the park."The Road" does have some interesting moments, as I mentioned above.
Aside from not being scary, the movie does a great job at building up some suspense and an even better job at taking us back in time and showing us the things that lead up to the events in the start of the movie.
Plus it was initially the foundation of the previous segments of the movie.For a Westerner, then this movie didn't really offer much in the scare department, but the movie is worth watching because of the interesting story and the approach that the director had taken with it.
It is more creepy thriller than scary horror.
If you're like me and enjoy a good movie, no matter what the language, then you should check out this Filipino gem.What this film gives the audience is a story in three very different acts.The first act is the present day where three friends "borrow" a car to go joy riding.
The director Yam Laranas does a fantastic job of creating an eerie atmosphere, using shadows and light to their fullest.
you need to turn the volume down before all the glass in your house explodes...The second act starts to tell of the events that have led up to the present day events.
Adding to the creepiness of the earlier act the story now adds a dark and ominous feel as things become dangerous and deadly for the sisters.The third act goes back twelve years to the very beginning and shows the psychological effects that a dysfunctional family in turmoil can experience, especially if one of the family is mentally unstable.
This is one of the strongest sections of the film as it resolves the mysterious parts of the story.
Add the great acting of Carmina Villaroel who plays Carmela, a strong controlling independent woman caught in a loveless marriage due to having a child, a woman who runs hot and cold at the flick of a switch.All of this makes the story much more interesting.
The writers, Aloy Adlawan and Yam Laranas, easily blend the styles and intricacies into a strong and believable story that spread through the horror, thriller, psychological, and crime genres.I would recommend this to all horror lovers and even to fans of thrillers, who wouldn't usually watch a horror movie.
THE ROAD was somewhat great in a mediocre way.The story was beyond compelling and interesting.
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.
In FF you'll miss no story because the dialog is built into the open-captions, you'll not miss the easily forgettable laboriously long-drawn-out score and much of the film will return to normal speed.
If you're stuck with a thin script of kiddie-pool-shallow characters which is stretched several minutes between lines by vacuously empty repetitive images, don't liberally sprinkle your all-filler/no-killer film with over-crank and slow-motion to substitute for genuine tension or thrilling excitement.
That's what most Filipino movies are most of the time.
They tend to show stylish trailers which tend to leave audience curious, "Wow!", "Uh-ah..", " Will the whole film be as good as that?"I decided to watched it not because of all the hype but because I like Yam Laranas' previous work, "Sigaw" .
Very typical on a Filipino horror film when teenage actors/actress are being cast.
It was not mentioned whether he was adopted or raised by a relative.In the 1998 story arc, Luis is depicted as a lonesome teenager who massacred Lara (played by Rhian Ramos) and Joy (played by Louise delos Reyes).
Being a suspense movie, you should leave the audience guessing until the end.
Maybe the 3 story arcs are not meant to surprise the audience in the end.
How many films do that?But if you are looking for a deeper storyline, this movie is not for your.
It's actually a very sad tale for all concerned and isn't the kind of horror movie you can just watch for the "fun of it" and dismiss afterwards as just another horror flick.
For a minute there I was afraid he was going to turn the whole movie into one of those unbearable "trendy" flicks where it's all shaky hand-held camera work and half the time the actors are barely on screen and you end up feeling violently ill from motion-sickness.
The movie's score was perfect and the settings used were excellent and put to good effect.
Don't watch it if you can only enjoy a horror flick if it's a screaming pointless gore-fest with no real story to it (or if you can't stand subtitles!!
It has very great shots, that I was not able to witness in other horror movies.
What makes The Road recommendable to watch is the story per se.I loved how the film flowed, it's narrated through flashback and with that, you should start the movie from the beginning, do not go into the movie house if it already begun.
The Road is a psychological thriller, that will give you the eerie feeling upon leaving the theater.
If you able to loved "The Echo" which was directed by the same director, You'd be able to love The Road 100 times more.
This is a movie that will scare you not because of gore, of disturbing scenes, not because of a lot of scenes that will shock you, but because of the story itself.
RedIf Sigaw and Echo were about a haunted apartment, what is The Road all about?Laranas explores the idea of terror in this sleek horror-thriller.
No, there are no supernatural creatures that terrorize the other characters in the story, there is just a crime that for many years has not been solved, and the perpetrator is still on the loose.The police is baffled.
She is with Derrick Monasterio and Lexie Fernandez who spirited the car without permission for a good time.When Derrick and Lexie die in terror, the action shifts to Rhian Ramos and Louise de los Reyes in car that breaks down in the middle of the road.
This is in a different era and Laranas wants us to take a closer look as this can provide us a clue on what happened to Monasterio, Fernandez, and Forteza.The sisters see a man walking and ask him if he could help them with their car.
Richards seem to be a docile man, but inwardly he is sick and wanted to inflict pain on his victims.Again, this baffles us because there seems to be no direct connection to the previous scenes with the three younger actors.Yet, we suspect something, this could be the ghosts that haunt the road, but why?Laranas takes us to an even earlier time, at home, with a strange family.
Forteza finally finds herself again, and the police wonder how she was able to be in the place,Oh, there's one character we failed to mention, that of TJ Trinidad, a policeman helping in the investigation of the crime.
No, Laranas isn't interested in a police story, he is interested in how people behave in terror.The Road is perhaps the first local movie I've seen in years that I didn't feel the urge to go out of the theater after the first 15 minutes.
But Fernandez and Monasterio have died, so it leaves Forteza to tell the story, but can she?Forteza surprises us with an honest performance.
She reminds us of Dakota Fanning in her younger years starring in terrifying thriller Hide and Seek with Robert DeNiro.While the role is not lengthy enough to show more of what Forteza can do, I think it's enough that directors like Laranas is able to see beyond the 'tween stars sweet-young girl image.Alden Richards is in my opinion the biggest revelation in the movie.
With nary a dialogue, he is able to imprint his character on the audience's memory bits as the disturbed murderous teen who tortures to death Rhian Ramos and Louise de los Reyes.Richards, in creating this character, makes a prototype for other actors who are dreaming of portraying a significantly different character.Yet, the actor that makes a big mark for us is the young boy played by Renz Valerio.
And he delivers exactly the kind of performance that I like in movies.
With no frills but more substance, Trinidad's menacing character is hooded by his good looks and we are left with no inkling of what he is really made of and what he can do until the last minutes of the film.Laranas, apparently has picked up many things about filmmaking while making The Echo.
He is now able to tell a story without too much bending to the whims of producers who want movies to be really so damn sophomoric you'd want to puke at th end.
I wish "The Road" was a better movie.
Unfortunately, the film is undone by dumb dialog, clunky editing, an underdeveloped script, laughably thin characters, and bad acting.The neat idea?
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.
Fortunately, those things count for a lot, and they made the movie watchable.Where the film falls down the most is 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.