No Through Road

No through road is a short student film, which is a combination of the horror and thriller genre. It takes place almost entirely inside a car, with only 4 characters, and only one camera, making it very low budget, but this is used to their advantage to create a very real feeling to the film that makes it actually believable that it is found footage and much scarier. The low key lighting surrounding the boys and the car in darkness creates an isolated feeling that provokes fear in both the characters and the audience. The shaky handheld movement of the camera, as people pass it round, leave it on the dashboard or walk with it, also cements the element of reality. It also makes the ending full of confusion and panic, as the person holding the camera is running away from what is presumably an unknown, unseen attacker.
There is an atmosphere of tension throughout the film, as it starts with the message that this is found footage from a camera of four boys who were murdered, so right from the start the audience is on guard knowing something bad must happen. The viewer is temporarily lulled into a false sense of security as the start of the actual footage features the boys talking and laughing as they drive around. However things slowly start to go wrong as the boys become scared as they get more and more lost. Strange things start to happen more and more frequently such as, finding a bizarre old archway, the radio station playing creepy music, and a particular sign keeps reoccurring as they end up on one particular road no matter where they drive. The worse things get the more often the cuts to other footage on the camera happen, as though they are recording over an old tape and old pieces of footage show through as they have not been recorded over properly. This increases the sense of fear as it makes the film disjointed, and highlights how bad the situation has slowly become by showing footage of them, possibly just earlier that day when there was nothing yet wrong.
The ending of the film is made climactic by the sense of relief just before the worst happens, where the boys appear to be safe as they find a road leading to Stevenich and seem to be safely on their way home. When suddenly the lights cut out, the radio turns itself on playing the strange music from before, somehow they are back where they started by the strange arch and there is a figure approaching the car. The footage then becomes a blur of movement with only sounds heard are frenzied shouts and then a much worse silence, as the person holding the camera runs away. It ends with a shot of the camera's glass breaking and what could be blood staining it. This in itself wouldn't be horrifying but the tension has been so built up throughout the film, so as to leave the viewer on the edge of their seat that this ambiguous shot seems terrifying and leaves little doubt in their mind that no-one survived even though no bodies or proof of this is offered other than the message at the beginning.
The film cleverly plays on an experience almost everyone has had of driving though the countryside and getting lost, it is very plausible and the sense of fear that can arise from the unknown in situations like that is easy is empathise with. It also prays upon common fears like isolation, the dark, and the wilderness and the strange things that could be out there. Because of the sense of reality continued throughout it even when the implausible begins to happen it feels real, making any fear experienced feel justified as the viewer worries for the safety of what appear to be very real people.