Dead End | |
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Film poster
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Directed by |
Jean-Baptiste Andrea Fabrice Canepa |
Produced by | James Huth |
Written by |
Jean-Baptiste Andrea Fabrice Canepa |
Starring |
Alexandra Holden Ray Wise Lin Shaye Mick Cain Billy Asher Amber Smith |
Music by | Greg De Belles |
Distributed by | Lions Gate Entertainment |
Release date
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Running time
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85 minutes |
Country | France |
Language | English |
Budget | $900,000 |
Box office | $77,654,902 (DVD sales) |
Dead End is a 2003 French horror drama film written and directed by Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa. Although Dead End only had a budget of $900,000 it made a total of $77 million from DVD sales.
It tells the story of a dysfunctional family who find themselves on a neverending road in the middle of a forest during a routine drive on Christmas Eve.
Frank Harrington (Ray Wise), is driving to his mother-in-law's for Christmas dinner along with his wife, Laura (Lin Shaye), his son, Richard (Mick Cain), daughter, Marion (Alexandra Holden), and Marion's boyfriend, Brad (Billy Asher).
For the past twenty years, Frank has grudgingly driven his family to celebrate Christmas with his mother-in-law. This year, he takes a shortcut. It's the biggest mistake of his life: The nightmare begins. A mysterious woman in white wanders through the forest, leaving death in her wake. A terrifying black car with an invisible driver carries the victims into the darkness as they're seen for the last time screaming from its backseat. Road signs point to a mysterious destination they never reach. The survivors succumb to panic, to madness; deeply buried secrets burst to the surface, and Christmas turns into a living hell.
Frank falls asleep, nearly crashing into a car going in the opposite direction. Miraculously, none of them are hurt and the other car is nowhere to be seen. It's from this point on, the travelers are forced to stop several more times, with each stop resulting in the disappearance of a traveler, the hearse driving away, and the slow unraveling of sanity for the rest.
The mysterious road and the terrifying happenings during the night are eventually explained as the true meaning of the horror the family experiences is exposed in the last few moments. The woman in white and the black car with the unseen driver turn out to be more than just harbingers of death and the truth is far more horrible than anyone had imagined.