Year: 2011
Director: Yam Laranas
Summary (from IMDb): A twelve year old cold case is reopened when three teens are missing in an abandoned road. In the course of the investigation, deeper and gruesome stories of abduction and murders are discovered. After more than two decades, the secrets of the haunted road may finally be revealed.
My Quick Review: I had read a fairly high numbers of positive reviews for “The Road” and it even has a metascore of 71/100 (at the time of this review). On top of that it is a Horror Movie from the Philippines, and I had never watched one from this country before. I thought it would therefore be a nice change from my current diet of Thai Horror Movies. Well, I was wrong! I do not know how “The Road” got so many positive reviews when I was myself pushing fast forward many times during the course of the movie.
The Road is divided into 3 parts, taking place in 3 different times (1o years apart each) and linked by recurrent characters and a similar location, an abandoned road. My biggest complain here is the pace, the first act takes too much time before bringing in the ghost scares (3 teenage friends take a car to drive on this abandoned dirt road and are soon facing a ghost car) while the second story (2 girls get kidnapped by a deranged young man) is even more boring and too tame to really make any kind of impact.
Finally the third story, maybe the most ambitious one drama-wise, shows us a family with a castrating mom, a useless father and a psychologically abused boy. The acting is better in this part and the story, more interesting, but un-original as are the other stories.
I can not recommend this movie to anyone and if you guys have better recommendations for a good Filipino Horror Movie, I’m all ears.
My Rating: 4/10