IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Copy provided for review
Taking a classic story and turning it into a horror film is a trend that can go well or go horrifically. We’ve seen the recent burst of these with things like Winnie The Pooh entering the public domain and turning into a horror film that somehow forgot to enjoy the innate silliness of the idea. However, some properties offer a more organic way into the genre and arguably one such property would be The Wizard of Oz which is a franchise that might be mostly family-friendly but still can terrify when needed. Hell, The Wicked Witch of the West is the first truly scary character that most people see in their lives, she’s a truly terrifying creation that can make even full-grown adults recoil in fear. So, there is a little bit of a chance that something like Gale: Stay Away From Oz might actually work and I believe it really could… when it’s done.
The version of Gale: Stay Away From Oz that was provided is the short film version which is apparently just meant to act as a setup for an eventual feature-length film that is meant to go into production soon. In this version of the classic story, we follow Dorothy’s granddaughter Emily Gale (Chloë Culligan Crump) who is experiencing some traumatic nightmares that feel related to her big move from Kansas so she goes looking for answers which eventually leads her to finding her grandmother, Dorothy Gale (Karen Swan) who warns her to, quote “STAY AWAY FROM OZ”. A little disturbed by this Emily soon finds out that even if she wants to stay away from Oz, some things from Oz are going to come and find her and take her silver slippers by any means possible… or at least they might in the full version of this film.
As a proof of concept, there’s actually a lot here that’s worth looking at. Clearly Gale: Stay Away From Oz follows on from a film like Return to Oz instead of just the Judy Garland version we know, this is made clear through the mental health setup and… well, wheelers appear in one of the more horrifying sequences of the short. With that in mind, taking that classic cult film and turning things up to an 11 is a very fun idea for a horror film and it will be intriguing to see what Oz itself can look like on an indie budget when we finally get to see it. There’s certainly a sense of intense foreboding that builds nicely throughout the short, there’s no doubt that the director has a handle on how to build tension and deliver some effective scares with the material and hopefully when the time comes to actually show us Oz it will be as horrific as they seem to want it to be.
There’s a lot of very effective and unnerving ideas here. For example, there’s a moment involving Dorothy still desperately banging her heels together in a nursing home trying to get back home which can be heartbreaking, or one with a reveal of a major character from the books being a part of the real world and Emily’s life in particular that suggests some terrifying moments on the way. There’s a clear understanding of the material and the ability to take it and twist it for a unique addition to the series is promising… but then we hit the ending of Gale: Stay Away From Oz and the problem kicks in.
What this short ends up being is basically a half hour of setup and ends moments after we finally get to Oz, not even letting us see what it ends up being. There’s no real hint about what that’s going to look like or what kind of horror will be seen there, it’s an anti-climactic ending (mostly because it’s not meant to be an ending, it’s just act 1 of a longer project that hasn’t even been filmed yet). That’s kind of a problem that comes with releasing something like this as a short instead of using it to get investors, on its own it doesn’t quite work because it doesn’t have an end, it barely even has a middle. It’s all set up for what we’re going to see in the future which is certainly intriguing enough to make the prospect of the feature film worth waiting for but makes viewing this specific short a little deflating since it’s all build and no payoff.
Gale: Stay Away From Oz is a promise, a promise that the people making it have an idea and will be able to deliver on it in the future and to be fair to them it’s a fairly good looking promise but one that is going to be hard for them to fulfill. If we’re lucky and things go well, when the feature film comes out there is something here that might be worth the time. The short offers potential, you can see what they’re going for and it looks intriguing but the ultimate test will have to wait until we can click our heels three times and say to a cashier “One ticket to the feature-length film Gale please”.
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