What began as a 28-minute short released in 2023, the proof-of-concept “Gale: Stay Away from Oz” offered a darker, more psychological reimagining of Frank L. Baum’s Wizard of Oz mythology set in the modern world. Successful on its own, director and co-writer Daniel Alexander has now expanded that experiment into a feature-length film titled Gale: Yellow Brick Road.
Alexander builds a world where Oz isn’t a bedtime story everyone knows by heart. Instead, we meet Emily Laughlin (Chloe Crump), a twenty-something artist and children’s book author struggling with deep self-esteem issues and a nagging sense that she doesn’t quite belong anywhere. Her father is dead. Her mother died by suicide twenty years earlier. Emily feels unmoored, desperate to find her way home, though she isn’t even sure what “home” means anymore.
Two decades later, she still can’t bring herself to visit her mother’s grave. She avoids her own reflection, unable to meet her own eyes in the mirror. Plagued by nightmares, both in sleep and in waking flashes, Emily feels fractured, as if something inside her is unfinished.
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Then she finds an old book among her mother’s belongings, filled with strange drawings and cryptic phrases. Inside is the name Dorothy and a phone number. When she calls, she learns Dorothy is living in a facility for those with… an altered perception of reality. At the institution, Emily meets the headmaster (Laura Kay Bailey) and asks to see Dorothy Gale (Karen Swan). It doesn’t take long for Emily to realize this nearly catatonic elderly woman is her grandmother. The confirmation comes when she admits her mother’s maiden name was Gale.
During their meeting, Dorothy seems terrified. Protective. When she suddenly screams, “Stay away from Oz!” the warning feels less like madness and more like urgency. Emily knows she has to dig deeper.
But leaving won’t be easy. Her car won’t start. A strange man named Eric guides her back inside before a storm hits. The atmosphere grows claustrophobic. It begins to feel less like a care facility and more like a trap. When Emily finally escapes, she stumbles into a haunted forest populated by unsettling creatures, eerie sounds, and a curious companion named “Patches” (played by both Sarah Feltham and Rachel Hassett) whose stitched-together body and clothes give them their name. Patches cannot speak, but clearly wants to help Emily find her way home. The journey ahead, however, is filled with dangers both physical and psychological.
Alexander and co-writer Matthew R. Ford have crafted an unusual, horror-inflected take on Oz, leaning into mood, trauma, and fractured memory rather than whimsy. It’s familiar, but refracted through grief and unease.
As an indie production, the film stretches its scope impressively without ever fully pulling back the curtain. Visually, it looks more expensive than it likely was. The cinematography is striking, and the overcast palette adds a persistent sense of dread. That said, the storytelling can feel compressed at times. It’s as if certain backstory elements – particularly the root of Emily’s self-loathing – were trimmed away. The mythology of this deteriorating Oz is hinted at but never fully articulated. We’re given a villain lifted directly from Baum’s canon, yet their motivations and why Emily and her lineage are central to stopping them feel somewhat glossed over.
There’s also an intriguing but underexplored Tin Man and Scarecrow business that begs for more screen time. Early in the film, Emily dreams of standing before a burning scarecrow. Later, she repeatedly encounters a scarecrow on the facility’s lawn. The imagery is evocative, but the emotional connection between those moments never quite crystallizes.
Still, there is much to admire. The film is peppered with clever Easter eggs for Oz fans. The atmosphere is moody and immersive. While not a full-throttle horror film, it delivers at least three genuinely effective jump scares within the first half hour.
Performance-wise, Bailey stands out as the quietly devious headmaster, and Crump serves as a compelling audience surrogate, guiding us through this fractured Oz as she discovers it herself. There’s also something visually poetic about the casting. Crump bears a resemblance to Judy Garland and even Liza Minnelli. If you consider the 1939 film part of this universe’s lineage, she feels like a believable descendant of Dorothy Gale.
A mid-credits sequence hints that this is only the beginning. A planned trilogy appears to be in the works, with a brief glimpse of a familiar character suggesting more mythology to come. Imperfect? Yes. But ambitious, atmospheric, and clearly made with affection for Baum’s world.
I’m genuinely curious to see where Alexander and his team take us next down their Yellow Brick Road.
Gale: Stay Away From Oz plays for one night only at theaters across the U.S. on February 11th via Fathom Entertainment.
