DEAD END (2003)

 

(Directors/screenwriters: Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa)

Review

A bickering family of five (the Harringtons plus one) are making their annual Christmas Eve trip to a family get-together when Frank (Ray Wise, CAT PEOPLE, 1982), father, falls asleep at the wheel and almost crashes headlong into a truck. Now awake, they realize they’re on an unfamiliar road—Laura, Frank’s wife and mother to twenty-something Marion and adolescent-obnoxious Richard, is particularly put out her husband’s decision to take a different way this year.

Things go further south. Their intrafamilial verbal swipes intensify. They pick up a strange, baby-cradling lady in white (played by Amber Smith) who abruptly disappears, and Marion, who gave up her backseat for said woman, walks a short distance to a ranger station (also her family’s destination) when she sees her screaming boyfriend, Brad Miller (William Rosenfeld, billed as Billy Asher), whisked away in a hearse-like car—the family panics, situations worsening and becoming more bizarre with each passing minute, a forty-five-minutes-too-long TWILIGHT ZONE episode.

Genre-familiar viewers might spot DEAD’s thematic framework straightaway. If you’re a fan of such films and books, and bickering-family dynamics (I’m not), you might enjoy DEAD. If you’re not, you can give this popular movie a pass, despite its clever-playing-with-cliché twists, good-to-great acting, and overall visual and audio competence. It’s not bad, it’s just an initially promising movie that runs way too long, with a weak, overly familiar ending.

DEAD’s other notable actors include: Lin Shaye (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, 1984) as Laura Harrington—she’s especially great in this; Alexandra Holden (WISHCRAFT, 2002) as Marion Harrington, Richard’s older sister; Mick Cain (DRAG ME TO HELL, 2009) as crude teenager Richard Harrington; Steve Valentine (MONSTER HIGH: THE MOVIE, 2022) as “Man in Black”; Sharon Madden (TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: “LOVE HUNGRY”, 1988) as “Nurse”; and Karen S. Gregan (THE HAUNTING, 1999) as “Doctor”.

 

Deep(er) filmic dive

Speculation: Is the name of Frank’s wife, Laura, a reference to Laura Palmer, daughter of Leland Palmer (played by Ray Wise) in David Lynch and Mark Frost’s 1990-91 television/ABC series TWIN PEAKS?

At one point, Marilyn Manson is mentioned—one of Manson’s songs, “Wrapped in Plastic,” was inspired by one of the opening shots in TWIN PEAKS (“Wrapped in Plastic” appeared on Manson’s 1994 album Portrait of an American Family.)