Humor is hardly ever lightly sprinkled onto any horror movie.  If you want a little humor in your horror film you'll end up with something along the lines of Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (aka Dead Alive), or even the more recent zombie splatter-fest, Undead.  When it comes to dishing out the funny, screenwriters and directors tend to get a little on the zany side.  Like it or not, this seems to be the current trend.  We'll either be shown total brutality in the form of the recent Saw trilogy or an all-out gory laugh-fest such as the way films like the recent Feast tend to sway toward.   I suppose it just depends on what extreme you prefer and lately it’s been hard to find anything that's in between these two dominant styles of horror film making.  I for one am always looking forward too a well written dark comedy, and if the film has anything to also do with the supernatural...baby, I'm there!  Enter Dead End, a cliché title with a pleasant surprise in all the categories that help build a film for an extensive cult following.  I've never seen a horror film that bursts out with such wit and integrity.  You'll be asking yourself (while barely bracing your posterior on the edge of your seat) if it is okay to laugh at all the hilarious moments in this film because the humor is so very dark and offbeat.  I'll say also, Dead End does take a little getting used to, but IF the humor does sink into your liking, be prepared to add another feature to your favorites list.

Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa have written this well crafted gem of a thriller. Its exceptional storyline is so intellectually woven together that it will take multiple viewings to gather all of its symbolic elements that are all used extensively throughout the entire film.  The plot here is very original, although a tad bit on the repetitive side.  A family decides to drive through the night in order to make a timely arrival to a relatives house during the Christmas holiday season.  Along the way they get lost on a road that seems to have no beginning and no end.  Strange things begin to appear in the woods that surround the country road and one by one the members of the family start to go insane (or drunk) as they park the car to further explore there eerie surroundings.  It's the classic, "What was that strange noise" type of sequences, but not to worry, Dead End has plenty of original twists to dish out at every turn.  As expected, one by one that characters in the film come to there untimely death.  The catchy part is that all of these deaths are very offbeat and rather humorous with all of there grizzly nature.  A woman falls out of a moving car, only to get back up and scratch her head to realize, that it’s not her head she’s actually scratching...ITS HER BRAIN!!!  When she notices that there is a hole in her skull the size of a softball, she falls to the ground and mutters her last words, "Father, I made the cheerleading squad!  This is the happiest day of my life!!!"   It’s fucking ridiculous, I know, but it works!  Trust me.

Again, the plot does get a little on the repetitive side, but what keeps this movie nice and fresh are its well written characters and its witty sense of humor.  The script was also entirely written by the men who directed the film, and I for one have zero complaints.  It's true that none of these scenes come off as entirely natural or believable, but that isn't exactly what Andrea and Canepa are necessarily shooting for in Dead End.   Everything in this film, including the script, is rather surreal and offbeat.  It takes a little while to get used to, and the hardest part about this is that if you don’t appreciate the offbeat humor, the movie will be rather hard to sit though.  To be honest, it took me multiple viewings to really appreciate the characters in the film and the dialog they are forced to work with.  I don't hold this against the film at all.  If you do decide to sit through this film more than once, I guarantee you will love it more and more.

The overall look to this film is quite dark and very atmospheric.  The film takes place entirely at night and half the time in a small car that tightly fits a family of five.  Our directors rarely go for style points in Dead End.  The film is shot very linearly which really adds to the overall creepiness of such spooky encounters with ghostly images and other odd things that the family tends to stumble upon.  What's also noticeable and extremely effective in the film is that some of the objects that are used as props, such as a shotgun, baby carriage, and bottle of booze, tend to be very bright in the films resolution.  This especially is emphasized with the mysterious baby carriage that appears in the middle of the road toward the second half of the film.  Very spooky scene indeed!  All of these images add to the overall creepiness of the film.  Scenes that are set around a specific object are quite dominant.

I recommend Dead End to almost everyone.  Again, the humor will not be taken with open arms by all and even I had to take some time to get used to the overall feel of this film.  The DVD release of Dead End that I viewed didn't include any special features and from what I researched, there are no discs with any special features to be found on the market.  A behind the scenes look to the film would have been nice and especially a commentary by Canepa and Andrea would have also been welcomed.  Still, we're lucky to have films like Dead End out in the world of horror.  It's a good balance of edge of your seat creepiness and an all out hilarious experience.  It’s not overly brutal and it’s not zany in the sense of some of the other films that I've previously mentioned.  It's a great mixture of both, and for me...I gentle sigh of relief.  Highly recommended!