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They've never made a movie before. They've got no money. And they're French. What were the odds of first-time filmmakers Jean-Baptise Andrea and Fabrice Canepa getting a horror flick off the ground in Freedom-Fries-munching Hollywood? Now multiply that by the likelihood of it actually being any good and you have a nasty little surprise - Dead End, a cunning, deceptive chiller that plays to its strengths for every one of its 83 minutes.
The premise may have been filched from an old Twilight Zone episode - a bickering family stuck on a straight road that never ends while they're stalked by a ghostly hitchhiker - but the execution is top-notch, as very bad things happen to very average people with very gross results. Keeping us in the dark until the final scenes, Dead End wrings the maximum twist potential out of a scenario that would give David Lynch sleepless nights, while delivering just enough of the red stuff to keep gorehounds satisfied. Don't believe us? Well, lips are chewed off, ears are sliced, heads are bashed open and a woman frigs her brains out. Literally.
Silly, scary and not a little sick, Dead End wrings real tension from its simple premise while delivering some gory moments. Buckle up.
