I want to start this review out by saying Happy Mother’s Day to all of the beautiful mommies out there! I hope you all are enjoying a lovely day with your family and friends!
Instead of being predictable and writing about Charles Kaufman’s Mother’s Day or the subsequent re-imagining, created by Darren Lynn Bousman in 2010, I decided to take the unconventional route. And unconventional is just the right word to use to describe Jason Banker’s approach to a genre film with his 2012 release, Toad Road.
Toad Road follows a group of high school graduates who live a life of partying and drug abuse on a seemingly daily basis. Each individual seems to be lost in their own way, trying to figure out where to go and what to do with their lives. Sara, new to the scene and group is experimenting with drugs more and more and is further falling down a steep slope, excited about every experience she has with the substances. She convinces her boyfriend, James, to take a walk down the local urban legend ‘trail of the seven gates,’ known as Toad Road.
I’ve heard multiple things about Toad Road over the years, but never quite truly grasped what the film was about. I finally received a copy recently and decided today was the day to find out what I have been missing. I used the word unconventional earlier and I feel that there really isn’t any other way to describe this one. Instead of a straightforward horror film about urban legends and local lore, Toad Road plays out like a Vice documentary or a more artistic version of Larry Clark’s Kids. In fact, a Vice-like doc is a perfect comparison here, considering Jason Banker’s casting process involved gathering real life fans of Vice magazine and filming their antics to comprise a 70 plus minute film.
Each cast member is basically portraying themselves. James Davidson is James, Sara Anne Jones is Sara, and so on. Over 70 minutes of real drug and alcohol use is displayed with bits and pieces of an urban legend thrown into the mix. The acting is superb here because well, let’s face it, there is no acting being done whatsoever. This is as close to a documentary as you’re going to get without a film actually classifying itself as a documentary.
One of the only aspects that even takes this film into the realm of horror cinema is the fact that the once straight A student, Sara, disappears off the face of the earth, after an acid trip infused walk into the forest and down Toad Road. If you’ve seen the film Absentia, you may get a similar feeling when watching this. Other than this one tiny detail, the true horror, at least for me, comes from the real life events that occurred after production on the film was completed.
Sara Anne Jones, who is arguably the main focus of Toad Road, is seen throughout the film, delving deeper and deeper into the ‘spiritual’ side of drug use. Even James who is perhaps the heaviest drug user of the group thinks it is a bad idea for Sara to continue down this path, but his warnings and reluctance to support the idea are no match for Sara’s persistence and determination. The real life Sara sadly was not very far from the character portrayed on screen. In 2012, Sara Anne Jones overdosed on heroin in her apartment in New York City. The foreshadowing of this entire film is what makes the whole thing seem surreal and more frightening than any urban legend could, leaving an eerie feeling surrounding the entire production.
If you are a supporter of Artsploitation Films, as all of you should be, and want to see something a whole lot different from what you’ve seen in the past, check out Toad Road. It is creepy and artistic and needs to be seen at least once. It can be purchased on DVD now from Artsploitation’s official website.
I give this film 3 bad trips out of 5.
