GALE: STAY AWAY FROM OZ **** UK 2023 Dir: Daniel Alexander. 28 mins
Everyone has ventured into the world of the MGM musical THE WIZARD OF OZ, the Judy Garland film was not without its own real-life horror stories during production. The picture always had a sinister tinge to its makeup even with the bright songs, dancing, and the wicked witch screaming as she melts. The flying monkeys swarm all brought the flavor of the original opium-tinged books by L. Frank Baum to life or death. Daniel Alexander’s short film explores the cumulated effect of venturing into a fantastic world, a world often of evil, hate, retribution, and magic.
This ghostly film masterfully opens with Emily Gale (Chloë Crump) who is having some strange dreams. Her mother has passed away and she blames herself for not being close when it happened. Emily is looking through her mother’s house when she finds a box containing objects including a book full of drawings, handwritten notes, and…a phone number. That phone number gets through to the Gale Estate. That’s where her grandmother, Dorothy (Karen Swan) is living.
Dorothy is an older woman, trapped in a wheelchair, tormented by demons in a mirror. Taking a page out of Edgar Allan Poe’s A Dream Within a Dream, the older Dorothy has been worn down by the magic of Oz and not knowing what is real and what is not. Her Therapist (Clara Emanuel) tells Emily her visiting niece that she has a habit of “clicking her heels together until they are bruised and bleeding”
The days of the Emerald City and fields of flowers that make one sleep are replaced with green empty fields, ominous cloud formations, mysterious hospital people, demons that crawl and a banished evil seeking to go home. Emily must confront matters of this world the elder Dorothy unlocked years ago in a new, terrifying journey which is hinted at.
GALE: STAY AWAY FROM OZ (2023) blends many of the literary aspects of Oz stories with a hint of evil. The famous slippers are now their original white, not red ruby as in the film version. The picture is a clever blend of demons, and jump scares, only opening the door to the larger adventure. You can still see ties to the film with pictures, artifacts, and the evil mirror that anchors the story in a familiar way. The film boasts a stellar cast, especially the lead Emily (Chloë Crump) who carries the action well plus gets caught up in the world. The entire ensemble works subtly and brilliantly in evoking evil in moments of shrieking, subtle makeup change and good directorial decisions for camera work. One hopes for a larger continuation of this world.
Review by Terry Sherwood
GALE: STAY AWAY FROM OZ is available to watch now on the app Chilling
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