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A presentation for my English course:

Why Dead End?

I first saw this movie in 2005, and I was absolutely terrified, it scared the hell out of me. It is an example of what I call ‘an intelligent horror movie’.

I’ ve been analysing why this film struck me so much and tried to understand which are the components of a good horror movie, or rather a fantastic movie

Dead End was released in 2004; the Director is Jean Baptist Andrea. It won the Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film.

Although it is a low budget production - what is called a B-film-, in my opinion, it is a very good movie. It is creepy and disturbing.

The plot

For the past 20 years, Frank Harrington has driven his family to celebrate Christmas with his mother-in-law. Each time, he has taken the highway. This year, he takes a shortcut. It's the biggest mistake of his life. The family end up on a lonely road through a dark forest. Frank falls asleep and manages to avoid a crash with an oncoming car. (an early clue).

Then, the nightmare begins. A mysterious woman in white, carrying a baby, wanders through the forest. The hell breaks lose and family members start to be taken one by one by a terrifying black car resembling a hearse (a long vehicle used for carrying the coffin at a funeral). Each time their bodies are found a few miles further down the road, heavily  mutilated.

Every road sign points to a mysterious town Marcott, a destination they never reach, and the road seems never ending. The survivors start to panic and become mad. Deeply hidden family secrets come to the surface.

In short: Christmas, which is supposed to be a holiday full of peace and joy,  turns out into a living hell.

No gory horror

It ‘s not a traditional horror film: there isn ‘t very much gore and blood in it. However, gruesome, horrible things happen, the characters are one by one killed and mutilated. But this is only suggested, not shown. Suggesting is much more powerful than showing; psychological tension is (at least in my opinion) more horrifying than the bloodiest details. In this way, Dead End resembles other masterpieces of horror fiction, such as Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock, or The Blair Witch Project (1999) by Daniel Myrinck.

The real horror –in the minds of the characters and the viewers- comes from not knowing what is happening. Is it a psychopath on the loose doing these terrible things? Or is here a supernatural reality interfering with ‘normal’ reality? Who is the mysterious women in the white dress, with her baby; who appears to be dead. Who is the man in the black car, and why would they want to kill the family?

The setting

The setting creates a hallucinating sphere:  the inky dark wood, the endless, desolate  road and the Marcott sign. There are no side roads, no stores, no houses, just a straight road leading no where. They pass the same Marcot sign again and again. What the hell is Marcott? There seems to be no escape from this nightmare.

The setting is minimalist, repetitive and dreamlike/nightmarish. It makes you think of David Lynch. Cinematographically, there ‘s a lot of playing with the contrast between dark and light: the lights of the car versus the dark, creepy wood.

Characters and acting

There ‘s good acting, despite what we see in most B-films. Although horrible things are happening, the movie concentrates most on the psychology of the character: how they relate to each other, how they cope with the horror.

Under the stress and the tension, the image of a ‘normal’ middle class family collapses; deeply buried family secrets come to the surface: suddenly, the daughter confesses she is pregnant, the son smokes pot, both the father and the mother have had extramarital affairs and, worse of all: the son is not the biological son of Frank.

Black humour

This is also an characteristic that reminds of David Lynch

Franks tries to phone the police, but the phone doesn’t work: Laura asks him: “Did you get the police?“ –“No, I forgot the number of the 1-1-1”

The family is completely lost, they are in a place out of the blue. Frank asks Laura if she has brought the map. She hasn‘t and Frank is angry. Laura answers: “Next time, I‘ll bring a globe, in case you feel like driving to my mother ‘s by way of the north pole.”