Dead end review

Dead End is a movie from 2003 with a really bland name. I knew nothing about this one but it turned out to be a nice surprise.

It's about a family on their way  to spend the Christmas holidays at their relatives house. And while driving there the dad takes a different road to spice things up as he grows bored of driving the same road year after year. As it turns out the choice of this alternate road wasn't the best idea.

Weird things happen along the new road, among them the appearance of a woman with a baby acting all strange which they pick up in the car only to have her disappear when they take a break by the roadside. Odd stuff starts happening and the family gets all weirded out and frustrated.

I got to say that this movie was somewhat creepy, but it mainly had fantastic humor without going completely into "horror-comedy" territory. The reactions from the family members once their mental status gets pushed to the limit. The dad is played by the same guy who played Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks, and the movie is worth watching for his acting chops and part alone. He is both creepy looking and outrageous at the same time and I laughed out loud a couple of times at the shit he says and does. The other people in this movie also do a great job. The plot on its own is predicable and not that great but it works and you can have theories about what exactly happened throughout the movie once you reach the end.

It is worth mentioning that it starts out pretty slow and uninteresting (part in establishing characters and the situation I guess), so you got to stick with it as it gets better all along and especially from the middle towards the very end. When the weird things start happen, they pile up quite fast.

It is not particularly scary, but the writing is good and the characters are great. And it's really entertaining to watch the whole family deteriorate under the great stress the situation has put them in.

7/10