Yellow Brick Road

In 1940, the entire town of Friar walks into the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The exodus follows a shared obsession with The Wizard of Oz and leaves behind hundreds of bodies and many missing residents. The government classifies their trail, and Friar is eventually repopulated but haunted by its past.

In the present day, the trail's coordinates are declassified and a research crew arrives to travel the route and uncover the disappearances. Teddy, the crew's leader, discovers the coordinates via the Friar cinema and organizes the expedition. The team includes Melissa, Walter, siblings Daryl and Erin Luger, Cy the forestry expert, and intern Jill; Liv also joins as a theater liaison.

Liv, who works at the Friar theater, agrees to accompany the crew on the journey. Her local knowledge helps the team navigate the treacherous trail and connect with the town's history. She becomes the group's link to Friar’s past and present.

The expedition starts smoothly, but the group is soon tormented by loud, unexplained music blasting from the woods. The eerie sound unsettles everyone and hints at a hidden force along the trail. The crew pushes forward, trying to keep morale up.

During a heated argument, Daryl brutally murders his sister Erin. The rest of the group is stunned as Teddy and Cy intervene to subdue him and bring him back into line. The moment marks a violent turning point for the expedition.

Daryl sits with Teddy and explains that the land is like liquid and claims that he and Erin had pinpointed the coordinates of the trail's end—the source of the eerie music. The crew grows fixated on reaching the end despite the mounting danger. This revelation deepens the fixation that drives the expedition.

The group reverses direction, battered by deafening feedback from the music. They discover Erin's body posed as a scarecrow in a grotesque diorama, and a massive deadfall blocks the path. While Cy is momentarily distracted, Daryl steals Cy’s machete and escapes again with the trail’s remaining vehicle and food.

Cy refuses to travel south and abducts Liv at knifepoint, hoping to cross into Vermont to save his life. The rest of the group fractures as Teddy and Melissa share a night together, and Teddy leaves at dawn to climb the deadfall, abandoning Melissa along with Walter and Jill.

After miles of walking west, Liv and Cy share hallucinogenic berries that blur reality. Cy reveals he has been planning unspeakable acts and urges Liv to bind and kill him; she does so, breaking his neck in a desperate moment.

Overnight, Jill eats the remaining food and, in the morning, walks off a cliff to her death. Walter, preferring to die sane and at peace, records his suicide on camera and ends his life. The group loses two more members in rapid succession as despair takes hold.

Following Walter’s footage, Daryl ambushes Melissa and kills her with Cy’s machete. Liv, in a trance, stabs Daryl in the neck with a pocketknife before collapsing nearby and resuming the poisonous berry ordeal.

Teddy crawls to what looks like the theater from the film’s start. An usher directs him to sit in a nearly empty audience as smiling town spirits appear. On the screen, Melissa speaks from a hellish landscape, and Teddy screams in horror at what lies at the end of Friar.