Toad Road
| Toad Road | |
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Theatrical film poster
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| Directed by | Jason Banker |
| Produced by | Jason Banker Liz Levine Adrian Salpeter |
| Written by | Jason Banker |
| Starring | Sara Anne Jones James Davidson Jim Driscoll |
| Music by | Dag Rosenqvist |
| Cinematography | Jason Banker Jorge Torres-Torres |
| Edited by | Jorge Torres-Torres |
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Production
company |
Blackout Films
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| Distributed by |
SpectreVision Artsploitation Random Bench Productions |
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Release date
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Running time
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76 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Toad Road is a 2012 American independent horror thriller film directed and written by Jason Banker. Toad Road stars Sara Anne Jones, who died of a drug overdose shortly after the film's premiere, as a young college student that is introduced to drugs and becomes obsessed with an urban legend about a road leading to Hell. The film premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival and had a limited release in October 2013.
Slacker James and his friends spend their days abusing alcohol and drugs and their nights at various parties. He moves through his life with a sense of boredom until he meets Sara, a college student seeking enlightenment from drugs. Knowing that this would prove harmful to her, James tries to dissuade Sara from this idea but is ultimately unsuccessful. As she becomes more and more addicted to drugs, Sara becomes obsessed with the idea of Toad Road, a road in York, Pennsylvania, that possesses seven gates rumored to lead directly to Hell. Legends state that each gate, once passed, cause increasing disorientation and eventual loss of self.
She persuades James to join her in an excursion to Toad Road, where the two take acid and eventually become separated. James ends up passing out and upon waking, finds that six months have passed since he and Sara went to Toad Road. She has been reported as missing and he is considered to be a person of interest in her disappearance. While he was missing, his friends have returned home, and he no longer has a place to stay. He moves into a shack owned by his uncle, and, pressed for details by the police and locals, turns to self-destructive activities, such as encouraging people to beat him up. Battered and feeling guilty about Sara's disappearance, he is haunted by visions of Sara. James asks her if he is responsible for her disappearance, but he receives no answer.
Banker first began working on Toad Road in 2008 and cast Jones as Sara, a college student addicted to drugs that becomes fascinated with the legend of Toad Road. He stated that he wanted to use the idea of drug addiction as a foil to the idea of the urban legend of Toad Road. Banker was inspired to create the film after watching footage for his documentary All Tomorrow’s Parties. Of the party footage, Banker commented that while the footage was great, it didn't "really [say] anything" and that it would be interesting to create a story "that felt like this but actually went and had a real story to it".Elijah Wood came across the film in 2012 during the film festival Nightmare City and decided to help produce Toad Road. Many of the scenes were improvised. Banker said he shot "a wealth a footage", then edited it into a series of tonal shifts. The cast were non-professionals that Banker recruited from social networking website Myspace. The interpersonal conflicts were in some cases real, as Banker wanted to find a group with natural and existing tensions. He intended to shoot the entire film himself but eventually called in Jorge Torres-Torres to assist.
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