In YellowBrickRoad eight people venture into the remote woods of northern New Hampshire. Care to guess how many get out alive? This indie horror flick by Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland stands squarely on the shoulders of The Blair Witch Project.

One of the party's leaders even does video interviews to chronicle his team's slow psychological breakdown in a zone where the compass spins wildly and strange aural hallucinations lead to madness. You can't say they weren't warned.

The group is researching a book on the 1940 disappearance of an entire

small-town population that followed the same haunted trail to oblivion.

And, certainly, they're aware of the danger in duplicating that fatal

trek. ("We're going to need a bigger boat," one jests.)

Not particularly gory or suspenseful, YellowBrickRoad confuses enigmas

with metaphors as the trekkers debate whether the intoxicating melodies

and painful clanging sounds in the air are some sort of virus or

collective insanity, and the forgotten path itself becomes a symbol of

some dreadful something.

"You always know it's there," says one woman, "a way out." The film is

caught in the fatal demographic desert between the Scream and Baghead

crowds--neither funny nor quirky enough to sustain interest during its

long march.

As the clueless eight stumble though the mysterious forest, you

half-expect them to find a field station for the Dharma Project--which

might've yielded a better movie.

--Brian Miller