Toad Road

By Jimmy Squarejaw
www.facebook.com/yallaredead

Many people have the idea that the danger of drugs lies in the fact that one is tempted to fly to them for refuge whenever one is a little bored or depressed or annoyed.  That is true, of course; but if it stopped there, only a small class of people would stand in real danger.

-Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

TOAD ROAD is an inebriating combination of storytelling and filmmaking that creates a final result as potent as the plethora of drugs all of the characters routinely consume during it.  Watching it, it becomes hard to tell when the movie stops and when the director, Jason Banker, decides to just let the camera roll on the real life characters of the movie destroying themselves with drugs and alcohol then prattling about whatever comes to mind for the camera or becoming self destructive. 

The story paints the bleak reality of a group of late teen, early twenty-year-olds who lead their lives to get annihilated off of drugs and booze, why not right?  Their prophetic insights caught on camera are almost as bad as listening to the confessionals on shit reality shows like the Real World or Jersey Shore but that isn’t a factor that detracts from the movie; these people come across as real and real people who abuse drugs all day are usually going to be annoying.  The Svengali –type ringleader named James, who is noticeably older than all of them, seems to command the screen a little more and the story starts surrounding him and his much younger love interest named Sara.  Sara is, up until a point, inexperienced with drugs and after a life changing trip becomes obsessed with finding the hidden truth in the urban myth TOAD ROAD.  Good for her because when I have life changeling trips I lay in bed for three days making sure reality is more than just molecules rotating at different rates of speed.

This was a really unique movie and truthfully it didn’t do too much for me at first.  I thought the filmmaker should have focused more on the actual horror element that was potentially lurking on Toad Road.  It was after I watched TOAD ROAD that I started to really think about it and went back for a second and now third watch.  The director mixes a deviated narrative with unscripted clips of the cast doing exorbitant amounts of drugs that don’t necessarily move the story forward but instead shapes their bleak existence that is no more interesting than watching stupid youtube clips-but that’s the interesting thing about TOAD ROAD.  A lot of the scenes resonated with me at a time of my life where I was surrounded and consumed by that lifestyle. While watching the movie I felt like I was going to have a drug-induced panic attack and that in hindsight was almost refreshing to get out of a movie.  There are stories online about the reality of the recreational drug use during the filming of the movie and the lead character Sara did end up succumbing to a heroin overdose a few years after the move was completed.  Knowing all of this, I can say the whole aura around TOAD ROAD is grim but it makes for a unique and effective film.

Going to skip the Wham-O-Gauge on this one being that it isn’t really a movie to be graded on this scale.  I will say however TOAD ROAD is incredible and heavily recommended.   

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Violence/Gore:

Rape:

Animal Death:

Necrophilia:

Torture:
Overall Movie: