DEAD END (2004)Frank Harrington (Ray Wise -
Jeepers Creepers 2) is driving to his mother in-laws one Christmas Eve with his family, including wife Laura (Lin Shaye -
Detroit Rock City,
There's Something About Mary (as well as all of the other Farrelly Bros. movies), Wes Craven's
New Nightmare), son Richard (Mick Cain), daughter Marion (Alexandra Holden -
How To Deal,
The Hot Chick,
In & Out), and her boyfriend Brad (Billy Asher -
Christmas With The Kranks), when, bored with taking the same way for 20 years, he decides to take a shortcut. Soon they find themselves in a living nightmare on a never-ending road with something or someone killing them off one by one.
Dead End is a real gem of a horror film. It's fully absorbing from beginning to end and genuinely creepy. This is easily one of the best horror movies I've seen all year, along with
Open Water and
Ginger Snaps 2, all coming from Lions Gate Films. Lions Gate should have released
Dead End in theaters Halloween weekend instead of the overrated
Saw. It was a sad Halloween weekend this year with no really good horror films in theaters and having
Dead End playing would have certainly made it better. With everyone craving horror for Halloween, it would have been the perfect time to release this baby in theaters and cash in on the holiday. Any other time it wouldn't have done as well; but Halloween weekend almost anything horror-themed will sell if marketed well. Sadly, this excellent little treat got stuck going straight-to-video in the US. What a disappointment!
Dead End has a great atmosphere that's spooky, morbid, and oh-so-fun. I loved the overhead shots of the car going down the long, dark road surrounded by a thick and seemingly endless forest. It did wonders for the film and was quite creepy. It had a smaller budget but managed to be way more creepy than most of the bigger Hollywood horror movies. I think having a limited budget definitely helped make this movie better. By being more suggestive and not showing everything, like it definitely would have done had it had a bigger budget to work with, we got to use our imagination and it just made the whole experience feel that much more sinister.
I love Alexandra Holden. I think she's absolutely adorable. After seeing her in recent movies such as
How To Deal and
The Hot Chick, it was a little hard at first getting used to her being skinnier in this movie. I was actually kind of disappointed at first. I've seen her skinnier in other stuff before, but I prefer how she looked in
How To Deal and
The Hot Chick. She was by no means fat in those movies, just a little chubbier. This girl is absolutely adorable and looks much better when she's not quite as skinny. She was especially cute-as-a-button in
How To Deal. That being said, I still loved her here. She was very likable as Marion and gave a very solid performance. While she was my favorite of everyone, I must say that Lin Shaye gives the best performance. She has the most to do though in terms of acting so it's obvious why her performance stood out. She's especially good when her character goes a little nutty, which was both funny and slightly irritating at times. I'm mixed on Mick Cain. He did a good job (and did seem like an actual obnoxious teenager, which is good considering he's playing a character that is almost half his age), yet his character was both funny and annoying, and not easy to like. I especially didn't like his character when he revealed what he did to his sister's hamster. Ray Wise was good as well. He was a little over-the-top at times, but it's obvious the movie was going for that because some of the other actors do as well and it wasn't in a bad way, it just had that feel to it like that was the way it was supposed to be. And even though he's not in it all that much, I did like Billy Asher as Brad.
Dead End was absolutely great up until the end. The twist was a major cop-out. It has been done before and it just disappoints here. It has worked before in other movies, but it felt out of place this time and drags down what was otherwise a smart and creepy little film.
********SPOILERS******** The twist tries to be smart and clever but here it just seemed like a way to get out of having to explain anything. In the question of whether what we see happen really happened or not there's going to be plot-holes either way. The twist reminded me of the twist in
Soul Survivors, except I thought that it worked really well there and everything seemed to make sense, but it wasn't welcome here and it leaves too many questions that aren't answered because it seems the filmmakers themselves wouldn't know how to answer them. And the twist ruins the creepiness. The film was dark and spooky and it would have been all the more chilling if the events we see actually happened. This twist is a big disappointment and not smart like it wants to appear, it's actually rather stupid.
********END SPOILERS******** While I still loved the movie and the twist didn't ruin it like some can, it was still rather disappointing that they took this route. I wish they had gone a different way.
Aside from a disappointing twist ending,
Dead End is a highly fun and eerie low-key horror film that reminded me of a
Twilight Zone episode (not a particular one) with a pinch of David Lynch. It's old-school horror most of the way but with a more modern (and poor for this movie) twist. It's one of the best horror movies of the year and it's a shame it didn't get a theatrical release in the US. Both delightfully spooky and funny, this is a "dead end" worth taking.
Grade: 8/10 (B+)