I didn't realise it was directed by the guy who directed Sigaw until after I'd seen it. (Sigaw is one of my faves). This director doesn't rely on cliché techniques such as jump scares, fake-outs, shadows jumping across doorways and all that other stuff we're so used to. He simply puts together a carefully crafted story and tells it beautifully with interesting twists and an obvious love for his craft. This is not a movie for the slash & giggle crowd or the jump-addicts. It's a psychological suspense drama that will - if you let it - draw you in and play with your emotions (and this coming from a chick who avoids dramas like the plague!!) while surrounding you with creepy suspense. It's actually a very sad tale for all concerned and isn't the kind of horror movie you can just watch for the "fun of it" and dismiss afterwards as just another horror flick. It's a tragic tale of dysfunction with a lot of ghosts and ghoulish moments.Some of the acting may have been a bit dodgy (particularly from some of the youngsters in the first act & one of the 'grieving' mothers unfortunately was laughably bad), but other more experienced actors were extremely good. All of the main characters in the third "act" were outstanding & I was deeply effected by their performances. The camera work was often brilliant and the director uses a range of techniques, lighting, camera shots, emphasis, background objects, etc to create the right mood or effect. For example, in one early scene he jumps between ordinary cameras and a shaky handy-cam throughout a particularly harrowing sequence. For a minute there I was afraid he was going to turn the whole movie into one of those unbearable "trendy" flicks where it's all shaky hand-held camera work and half the time the actors are barely on screen and you end up feeling violently ill from motion-sickness. My had was actually reaching for the eject button! But mercifully he didn't succumb to that. Just like he didn't give in to conventions anywhere in the movie. He was just using that convention for that particular scene to enhance the conveyance of terror felt by the characters. This is how that camera technique should ALWAYS be used (if at all!!). The movie's score was perfect and the settings used were excellent and put to good effect. One or two head-scratching plot holes perhaps - or it could be a cultural gap issue. I'm not sure. In any case, it doesn't detract from my overall view that this is a movie well worth seeing.I am not a fan of slow, overly clever, "arty" movies (eg The Devil's Backbone left me completely unimpressed - I rate this flick as better) and this movie, although it's not a fast past action-oriented one by any means, was well paced and grounded. It never stepped over the line into pretentious like TDB and similar movies.Watch this if you like mystery, suspense, thrillers and don't need to have a scream a minute thrill-ride every time you watch a movie. Don't watch it if you can only enjoy a horror flick if it's a screaming pointless gore-fest with no real story to it (or if you can't stand subtitles!! LOL).

This film by Yam Laranas ("The Echo") is divided into three segments. The first story concerns three young teenagers who drive down a desolate road at night, not knowing that it is haunted. This is a very cool, lengthy sequence with some nasty looking ghouls. The atmosphere is dense and the scare tactics are nicely crafted. The next two stories are flashbacks that show the historical acts of violence that are connected to the hauntings. The style here feels like a modern French horror film. It's very professional, with great photography, very eerie scoring, and solid performances. No humor or stupid one-liners to be found here. The deliberate pacing and gloomy mood will likely wear viewers down, which is a trait that I find to be a very positive thing. I strongly recommend this.On a side note, I find it somewhat annoying that this film has such a low IMDb rating and such negative reviews. In a day and age where crap like "The House of the Devil" (2009) and "Insidious" (2010) are praised and hyped as new genre classics, I guess I shouldn't be surprised when a genuinely strong horror film like "The Road" (2011) is derided and criticized for being "too slow." Perhaps a few dozen cheap jump scares or some graphic violence would have sufficed to keep our attention deficient audiences awake. For goodness sakes, "Rob Zombie's Halloween" is currently rated higher than "The Road." Yeah . . . okay.

THE ROAD was somewhat great in a mediocre way.The story was beyond compelling and interesting. Critics says that the movie is scary but I disagree. The movie wasn't scary, it was just creepy and mind-disturbing.The 3 parts of the movie, which is in backwards chronology, will keep you up in your seat. But to enjoy this movie, you have to be a keen observer about the details of the story.Some says that the movie was a big plot hole, but it's not.If you're filipino like me, you would relate to the story and not say that it's a plot hole. You just need to understand the movie more. There was no plot hole. Every question of the movie was answered in the end.It was scary though, for filipinos like me, because mostly everyday, these things happen to us (people get lost, get killed, they turn to ghost and stuff) because in Philippines, we do believe in this stuff and there are big chances for these things to happen to us because Philippines is one big ball of mischief and horror. the script and the acting were both mediocre and a little bit lousy, Overall, the movie was great, the story was well build, the cinematography was beyond amazing and the movie itself was in a powerful premise which was powerful enough to compel foreign viewers.I give this movie a decent 7 out of 10

"The Road" tells the story of violent occurrences on a stretch of an abandoned road over a timespan of 20 years. It is divided in 3 Chapters, each then years apart. The chapters are interconnected, the whole story unfolding with the third episode. The storyline moves back in time - it therefore starts with the most recent occurrence in 2008 and depicts then the incident of 1998. Finally it connects the lose strands left by the two previous episodes by showing us what happened in 1988.Good things first: the sonic ambiance, the score if you like, is great. It pushes expectations right from the start. Bad thing : it is utterly wasted on this film. I don't want to go deep into the tremendous holes in the storyline, illogical behavior all around and very cheap and sententious depiction of the development of a psychological illness. It's enough that you know that these are annoyingly obvious even for a genre that thrives on them. The real pain of the movie is the acting. The first two chapters have a cast from the Children's Hospital of the Terminally Talentless! The script lets 16 year olds act like toddlers. The dialogs are horrible. They are like an audio summary for the blind: never telling more than the absolute obvious. While I do think it refreshing if a horror movie for once doesn't exploit violence and gore, this movie is not giving a valuable solution - I have seen more violent fisticuffs in Stan&Laurel movies. The uneasy avoidance of graphic violence while actually implying its existence, leads to ridiculous scenes - like a girl bleeding from a head wound apparently because she fell on a mattress.There is no special twist. It is a well used recipe in filmmaking to divide a movie in several chapters that intertwine and all get connected in the end. This was professionally executed, but without major surprises. The movie in itself is neither scary nor startling or revealing. It develops some more depth with the third chapter, which is so much better than the others that it seems to be from a different director entirely. But too little, too late. 3 Stars because sound and cinematography deserve recognition.