Toad Road is an independent film which was discovered and picked up by Elijah Wood’s production company ‘The Woodshed’ while he was putting together the programming for a horror film festival in Los Angeles. The festival, called Nightmare City, is going on right now and will be hosting the US premiere of Toad Road next Tuesday, October 23rd at 10pm.
The film is reportedly earning critical acclaim from festivals all over including the Fantasia Arts Festival in Montreal where it garnered Best Director and Best Actor awards. According to Elijah Wood: “Programming the (Nightmare City) festival, we viewed scores of new horror films, but TOAD ROAD leapt out of the pack with its devastating power.”
The story is based on a real life urban legend out of New Jersey. According to Dread Central, the legend surrounds “an insane asylum back in the woods on the outskirts of town. All the unwanted weirdos were put in the asylum and they built a road leading up to it with seven gates. The gates were constructed as layers of security so the inmates couldn’t get out. At some point there was a horrible fire where most of the inmates died. The few that did escape ran to the forest and were killed by local residents in terror.
The gates remained standing long after the fire. The people that walked through them started to realize that there was something strange about the gates. With each gate something new happened, and it became more and more paranormal the further down the road you went.
At the first gate you sense something is watching you. At the second gate you start to hear things running in the woods around you. At the third gate you actually start to see things and they warn you not to go further. At the fourth gate you pass out feeling hot or cold, and this is meant to scare you into turning back. The fifth gate is the one that nobody has gotten past… but it is rumored that you move through time.” Apparently, the movie focuses a lot on that fifth gate but as far as the sixth and seventh gates go, no one’s been able to come back and tell anyone what happens. Legend has it the seventh one is either a black void or the gate to hell.
Like your typical scary film, Toad Road is also about teenagers doing stupid things. In this story, the stupid things are lots of drugs, and there does seem to be a strong parallel between the descent into addiction and the descent into hell.
[Sources: Dread Central, Deadline]
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