Gale Stay Away from Oz

Emily Gale (Chloë Crump, Do You See It Too?, Do Something, Jake) has been having nightmares which may be related to her mother’s death. Her psychiatrist Dr. North (Laura Bailey) isn’t much help, especially when it comes to the biggest question of all, the identity of Dorothy, whom characters in her dreams mention.

And then, as if by magic, she finds something among her mother’s belongings. It’s a notebook belonging to her grandmother Dorothy Gale (Karen Swan, Guilty Pleasures). And, as it turns out, she’s still alive, although confined to a nursing home. Emily makes arrangements to visit, but that may raise more questions than it

Director Daniel Alexander (Different Breed, Dominant Species) also provided the story that Matthew R. Ford (Bait, Safely to Shore) turned into a script that shows a side of Oz that I haven’t seen since Walter Murch traumatized kids, and more than a few of their parents, with Return to Oz. It, like the Oz of Gale, is a much darker and horrific place than the song and dance filled land of Disney’s film.

This is not to say that Gale: Stay Away from Oz is a cheap horror take on the original along the lines of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey or The Mean One. Rather than turning a child’s fantasy into a gruesome tale, Alexander and Ford emphasize the darker elements already present in it. And while I’m not overly familiar with the later books, even The Wizard of Oz had witches, evil flying monkeys, a character crushed under a falling house, etc. I’m actually surprised this approach hasn’t been taken more often, it seems a more logical twist than a film like the Aussie musical Twentieth Century Oz, which turns innocent Dorothy into a sixteen-year-old groupie.