No Through Road

***No Through Road*** (alternatively stylised simply as ***NTR***) is a British web series written and directed by filmmaker Steven Chamberlain, who also stars. Considered a foundational work of the analog horror genre, originating from a 2009 short film based on the Bunny Man urban legend, the 1999 supernatural horror film *The Blair Witch Project*, and the 2008 psychological horror film *The Strangers* (from which Gillian Welch's "My First Lover" is sampled), which was expanded to a series in mid-2011, the series purports to be footage found in a discarded video camera belonging to four teenagers en route to Stevenage, as they find themselves trapped in a time loop, pursued by a hatted masked man. With the cast and crew initially being uncredited to maintain the illusion of the footage being real in the early days of online video platforms, the series was aired through to late-2012 on YouTube, going viral and receiving a positive critical reception.

## Development

In November 2020, Steven Chamberlain publicly revealed himself as the director, writer, and co-star of *No Through Road*, with his cast and crew having initially remained uncredited to maintain the illusion of the original 2009 short film and 2011–2012 web series continuation being legitimate found footage, only naming one other cast member as Oliver (who portrays the car's driver "Ollie" and main star of the film), with the characters serving as fictionalised versions of themselves (à la *The Blair Witch Project*). Having made the original film as "a lark with a group of friends when they were all around 17 or 18 [before] realizing that the end result was actually pretty impressive", Chamberlain used it to earn himself a position in the University of Westminster's film program, crediting there as being "a pretty clear path back to '*No Through Road*' in terms of any success that I do have currently [in my career]".

Chamberlain was inspired to make the original film in late 2008 when with his friends took to "nighttime drives" through the Stevenage countryside in another's Peugeot Quiksilver, being inspired to create the film after the friend group came across a "relatively well-known" no through road outside Broomhall Farm, remarking upon its "creepiness" and suggesting various "spur-of-the-moment" ideas to his friends, including "that sign that goes towards Benington. What if we can't escape it?” How would [we] all react if they passed the sign once? Twice? Three times? And I'd just press record, we'd drive past it again, and that's what you['d] see in the film". Improvising most of the film, Chamberlain described the "lack of structure, combined with the fact that none of his friends were actors in any sense of the word" as what made the film so "believable", describing it as "sort of like lightning in a bottle – because we weren't planning on [making] it, it has that authenticity", editing together and uploading the film to YouTube (with a musical riff of Gillian Welch's "My First Lover" sampled from *The Strangers* included at the end) over the following weeks.

Describing *The Blair Witch Project* as the "unavoidable inspirational thing" behind *No Through Road* (although not a direct inspiration), Chamberlain elaborated on having been "play[ing] loosely enough with what it was doing that it managed to avoid falling into the trap of an overly structured narrative [and] comes across as completely and utterly natural. No wonder one of the primary search terms I’ve found people inquiring about over the years isn’t just “*No Through Road*,” but “Is *No Through Road* real?”, and that while the majority of the original *No Through Road* video was shot in that one night, the ending – "the moment the masked figure appears in front of the tunnel, illuminated by the car’s restored headlines" – was filmed as a pickup few weeks later, with Chamberlain playing the masked figure as well as himself, wearing a trench coat, cowboy hat, and drama mask and using bit of "trick editing" to allow himself to appear as two different characters onscreen at the same time.

While intended as "a one-off — a self-contained unit that stood on its own as piece of found footage storytelling", development of a web series sequel began during Chamberlain's university years, casting another friend, Dave, as himself, "operat[ing] the camera throughout [most] of the three follow-ups". Unlike the original film, Chamberlain spent several brainstorming sessions developing a direction for the follow-ups, spending "a lot of evenings drinking beer and writing down ideas, and going, no, that’s too complicated, how can we make this just complicated enough that people might get it, and it would be satisfying, but not answer all the questions" before settling on a time loop as the primary concept, in leading to the "rug-pull, gut-drop moment [in *No Through Road 4*] when you realize that the car that's turned up is them in the past". While filming the second installment, Chamberlain elected for a slower pace, still "largely improvised [but] a lot more restrained and had a slightly different tone to it[…] seeing how real we could make this feel and how languorous the pace would be if you weren't planning on making a film", envisioning it as a way to make the film "still feel authentic and scrappy", while the third and fourth videos were developed together as a unit, the three follow-ups serving as "very much a sequel[…] planned very much as a separate thing, like, if we can live up to ['*No Through Road 1*'], how are we going to do it?” On the fan theories resulting from the series and its meaning, Chamberlain described "the not knowing" as what had given the series such longevity, citing David Lynch and *The Blair Witch Project* as one of his main cinematic inspirations on depicting "the thing you don’t see", that if "there'ss any kind of reason behind the longevity of '*No Through Road*,’ it'ss because I kind of took that one point on board fairly well".

In a separate interview in March 2022, on learning of the series' retrospective analysis as a foundational work of the analog horror genre (which took off through the 2010s, with *No Through Road* cited as an inspiration for such works as Kane Pixels' *The Backrooms*), Chamberlain elaborated on the films having been shot with a MiniDV, mainly from a desire to "test it out" at the age of 17, with the cast being drunk while filming the original, and that while portraying the series' masked figure, that "there were quite a few hairy moments where I had to leap and hide in the hedgerows so that I wasn’t arrested by the police for scaring the crap out of people who were just trying to drive home" due to how he was dressed. On developing the sequel web series, Chamberlain further revealed that the time loop concept had been inspired by the *Doctor Who* episode "Time", which had then-recently come out, "accidentally manag[ing] to capture the inherent tragedy of people that you like disappearing into a horrible scenario [while] speak[ing] to that fear that we all have.", concluding that "I'm glad that “*No Through Road*” is continuing to scare the crap out of people [so many] years later".

## Explained

### *No Through Road: Part One*

Video 01 Description: *On December 17th, 2008, four 17-year-old boys were found dead in their car at an abandoned farm, 10 miles from their hometown. This video contains the unedited footage from the camera belonging to one of the boys, also found in the car.*

The following found footage is focused on four teenage boys, Steven, James, Dave and a plus one to their little group, while driving around recording themselves, But the video would glitch into different footage for a quick second before switching right back to the main video. The teens would drive up into a small tunnel, that would have signs around the front that scream "***Private Road***", but the boys enter anyways even when they feel like something isn't right about this pathway. One of the lads even say that the Farm they are going towards was on the news for one reason or another but couldn't pinpoint what that reason was.

Right under the Farm's sign, a smaller one had read "***No Through Road***" while a through road would be a road that joins cities, towns, or villages together, but the sign is telling the boys that this is a Dead end. After driving along, the path for at least a long hour, they try to joke around o cheer up the group, so they don't worry too much about being lost at this "farm" and even record what they are doing while still getting those glitches from time to time. When the glitches did come back it was all when the teen with the camera said, "*It's like perfectly preserved as well.*" These glitches were filled with screams instead of some Homemade video, with a mysterious face looking right into your very soul.

After messing around a bit, and looking around the path, one of the boys runs right back to the car and tells them to book it out of there because what he describes to the rest of the group "*And he was like- wearing some sort of mask.*" But as much as this little crew wanted to call it quits, the path they were on wasn't going to let them, leading them right at the begging while they have taken no turns or anything, but only driving straight forward.

These four boys seem to be stuck going straight in a loop, like some kind of time paradox, this same concept can be related similarly to Nietzsche's theology on the Human experience that time is just simply a straight line, a flat surface to the eye of Man. Stuck to experience the same thing over and over again in an endless loop, labeled as the Human experience:

"*To Hunt, to be hunted**.***"

"*To Sleep, To Awaken.*"

"*To Eat, To Be Hungry.*"

And for these four boys, the flat surface they were on was, being on an endless loop on this path ever since they arrived.

After the third round about, they get loose from the loop by lucky chance, and the group celebrates for getting away from the horrid *Path loop*, and thinking they made it fully out okay the driver flickers his lights off and on to tease the group, but this unfortunately would reset the boys back to the start of the tunnel. When they try to reverse it and drive backwards to try ad reset from where they were beforehand, but the car doesn't move, not a single inch, The lights of the car goes off once more and the boys think that the driver was messing with them again so they scream at him to turn them back on but with all his effort he couldn't keep the lights to turn off.

When the headlights flashed, a Masked Figure could be seen, these four panic as this Masked Figure got closer and closer to attack. The Cameraman (***Steven***) tries to get away on foot, not wanting to die inside of a car that was no longer help to these teens, but only to be hunted down by this Masked Figure and killed with his very own camera.

The Flat Surface loops, there is no escape from ***No Through Road***.

### *No Through Road: Part Two*

Video 02 Description: *This is footage from the first of two tapes procured by the police following the event code named NTR2. I can only hope they do not catch me before I obtain the second tape.*

Ju*n*e 25th, 2011. Two years after the original incident a follow up would be leaked and released:

Two teens, James and Dave from the original incident come to give flowers for their fallen friend while also discussing what had happened, James not truly remembering what happened that night, the only thing that James does remember is flagging down a car and waking up in the hospital. The footage cuts to the two boys when one of them points out a dead rabbit on the side of the road then soon looking around to wonder where they even are at this point in time. Just like before these boys try to joke around to lighten the mood, but unlike last time there was no laughter, especially when they had driven right back to steven's grave, the beginning again.

James would have the car lights pointed to a sign that was near them and it would read "Benington." The very same Benington that had them stuck i that endless loop on the dirt path, the pair would choose to go straight on this path to see if anything changes, but over and over and over again they would see that sign. The pair try all the logical solutions they can come up with but no matter what, they end up back here in the loop, having zero Wi-Fi and zero 3Gs.

The only thing that might be helpful to these two right now is their emails which aren't very consistent to a connection, but it was all that was really left to do for some help out of this hellish loop, so they would attempt to send out a S.O.S's Email out. While they did do this a figure could be seen walking around the car in the background of the footage.

The footage would soon cut to James shortly after, talking about why they even came to Steve's grave in the first place and even asked if it was worth it and while they talked about this stuff the audio cuts

[23:20]