Review of The Road (2011) by Tim M — 16 Nov 2012

This film's main problem is that it is about 20 minutes too long. I could also point toward its predictability and it being derivative of other films as flaws, but I'm not going to because I thought that the movie, even with this, did a good job at telling an effective story, well as effective as a horror film can be, while at the same time managing to do a lot with its, seemingly, low budget.

Visually the movie does some very cool stuff and it gets the atmosphere just right, there are some tense moments throughout the film. The problem lies in the fact that the movie is simply too long. The first part of the movie, the film is divided into 3 parts, simply takes forever to get to the point.

I understand it was probably done to build suspense, but was it really necessary to have the 3 characters driving in the middle of a dark road for 20 minutes without anything happening. In a way it does build up suspense adequately, but I think you could've gotten to the point in 10 minutes and the movie would've been even better.

And the other parts of the movie have moments like these, where you could've simply cut it out altogether to the benefit of the film. But I did like the story, it did a good job at making you, not necessarily empathize, but understand how a person can become a psychopath.

Really at its core, the film is more character driven than you would originally think. It still has some good and scary scenes but at its core the film is about what exactly makes get to a point where they become insane and do horrid things to other human beings.

So I liked that they, sneakily, had a story to tell and it wasn't all about the horror. So while not without its flaws, I certainly enjoyed this film a lot. It's not perfect but it's still quite a good film.