Dead End (2003)
But, again, structurally the movie ends with a twist reveal and the bulk of the film is executed quite well, so... if you want to be surprised when it's revealed the near-collision at the start of the movie was actually a crash which killed all but one of the main characters, I recommend you stop reading before the start of this paragraph. You've been warned.
Let's back up a bit. Dead End is directed by Jean-Baptiste Andrea and - according to Netflix - is a French movie for purposes of production, despite being filmed in English with American actors. It skews heavily towards the comedic end of the horror genre, but also includes some disturbing images and - once it gets going - a deeply unnerving tone. As I said at the start, this one's a ghost story through and through, and it encompasses the silliness inherent in that genre, as well as the creepiness.
The movie was clearly produced on a low budget, utilizing only a couple locations (most of the action takes place in the interior of a car) and a minimal cast (there are really only six characters, aside from a handful of minor roles at the very end). To Andrea's credit, he turns these limitations into strengths, trusting the cast to hold the audience's attention, building tension with the locations he has, and investing in a few convincing gore effects.
The movie's five protagonists are a family of four plus their daughter's boyfriend, all of whom are driving through a secluded forest on Christmas Eve to a holiday celebration. The aforementioned "not-an-accident" occurs when the patriarch, Frank (played by Ray Wise), falls asleep behind the wheel and nearly hits an oncoming car. It at first seems like everything's fine, but they soon stop when they find a woman dressed in white (played by Amber Smith) cradling an infant wrapped in blankets at the side of the road. She appears hurt and doesn't speak, so they drive to an abandoned cabin and split up to look for a way to call for help, leaving the woman in white alone with Brad (the boyfriend), who gets a quick lesson as to what genre of movie he's in.
The only one who sees anything is daughter Marion (played by Alexandra Holden), who catches a glimpse of Brad (or more accurately Brad's tormented soul) in the back of a passing hearse. The family tries to catch up, only to discover Brad's mangled, bloody body on the side of the road. This leaves Marion in a state of shock and the rest of the family understandably anxious to return to civilization and find the police.
They keep driving in a desperate attempt to reach "Marcott," a town they've never heard of until they see a sign referencing it, but they never seem to make any progress. As they go, other bizarre events clue them into the fact something isn't right: they discover all their watches stopped at 7:30 PM, they start hearing eerie voices through the radio and through a cell phone removed from Brad's body, and so on. As their sanity wears thin, they bicker and various secrets come out. We learn Marion's pregnant, both parents have been unfaithful to each other, and Richard (the family's teenage son, played by Mick Cain, who was a bit old for the role) is actually the child of a former friend of Frank's.
By that time, Richard's dead, too, following a particularly disturbing sequence involving the woman in white biting off his lower lip. He gets a ride in the hearse, as well, before his family finds him burned to death in the street. At this point, matriarch Laura (Lin Shaye) more or less loses her mind. When Frank refuses to stop the car so she can talk to people she sees in the woods, she simply jumps out. They stop to find her but only discover her belongings. The hearse arrives again, and this time Laura stumbles out with a gaping head wound exposing her brain. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't last much longer.
Having more or less given up on escaping in their car, Frank and Marion try going on foot through the woods, only to discover they eventually loop back to where they started. After knocking his daughter out following yet another creepy visitation, Frank sees the woman in white and runs after her with a gun, but... you already know how that's going to go. Marion wakes to some disturbing apparitions and tries to escape, but by now the car's on empty.
She stumbles out and dares the forces that have been playing with her to end it. She then finds four body bags holding the bodies of her family and boyfriend. The woman in white shows up again, along with the hearse. Before the mysterious woman gets in, she tells Marion the driver isn't there for her.
And Marion wakes up in a hospital, where she's being looked after by Doctor Marcott following the accident that killed her family, Brad, and the two occupants of the other vehicle (that'd be the woman in white and her infant child). Once Doctor Marcott leaves her patient, she meets a man in black who thanks her for what she does and ultimately offers her a ride in his antique hearse (he says he's a collector, and... you get the idea. Also, there's a mid-credits sequence where a road crew finds a note Frank wrote during their trip, which confirms it all occurred somehow.
Again, for the most part, the movie works, assuming you enjoy creepy a ghost story with comedic flourishes. The humor largely lands (though I could have done without some of the jokes around Brad's horny, homophobic character), and the suspense builds beautifully. The problem, however, is that ending.
I'm not really even talking about the choice to give this the most generically obvious twist imaginable - frankly, I'm fine with it setting out to deliver on an old formula. My issue is with how it handles the reveal and the stuff after. Despite the fact the majority of the film plays out as if the filmmakers trust we're in on the joke, the ending shifts gears and explains everything as if that's not the case. It's a weird, awkward sequence that breaks the tone of the preceding movie in order to deliver information that could have been done in a fraction of the time.
On top of that, the one aspect I didn't see coming - namely the "woman in white" being the driver of the other car - feels like a random detail that doesn't really track with what we've seen up until that point. If she's effectively a soul in the same boat as the characters we're following, why is she working with the driver? I guess you could infer she's pissed at them for being responsible for the accident and is torturing them in retaliation, but it still doesn't explain how she knows as much as she seems to. I have similar issues with the whole thing at the end with the driver giving Doctor Marcott a ride: none of this really gels with what the movie has implied about him. I'm fine with stuff going unexplained when it's a net positive to the movie, but all this breaks the flow of the movie and adds nothing of value.
Depending on how much you value the journey versus the destination, the ending may or may not be a deal breaker. After all, we're just talking about a couple minutes at the tail end of an hour-and-a-half film. But honestly, it left a bad taste in my mouth, and it's the reason I'm not recommending this more enthusiastically.
Now then. Let's talk Christmas.
As far as most viewers are going to be concerned, Dead End is fairly light in terms of holiday content. Most modern Christmas horror movies revel in the timing and seek out opportunities to showcase decorations and music as a contrast for what's on screen, but that's not really the case here. The holiday timing plays into a few minor details, such as the presence of a shotgun and a bottle of liquor that were planned gifts for family members, as well as an obvious justification for the characters traveling together in a car, but it's not a major plot or even tonal element (though the movie does make clever use of the song Jingle Bells, particularly during a traumatized reprise).
This does appear to play with associations between Christmas and babies. The woman in white bears the body of her deceased child, and we learn Marion is pregnant (the ending informs us her baby survived the ordeal, incidentally). In both cases, the babies seem to be fatherless by virtue of existing on different sides of the mortal divide from their father (I'm making some assumptions around the dad of the woman in white's kid, but we're never told otherwise). This feels at least superficially similar to the nativity.
The real holiday connections lie a bit deeper, though I'm taking it on faith the filmmakers were even aware of them. First, let's talk about the time stop. The characters' watches (along with the car clock) all freeze at the point of the accident. The primary reason for this, of course, is to foreshadow the reveal that they didn't escape, but it also ties into the solstice, when time - at least in a sense - stops. This seems to be a common idea in Christmas media - I discussed it last year while reviewing the 1947 film Repeat Performance, and I don't think it's unreasonable to wonder if a similar idea may have contributed to the use of time travel in Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
In addition, the Christmas ghost story itself is a very old, very seasonally appropriate tradition. The Christmas season was long considered haunted in ways the events of this movie echo. The entire situation is evocative of legends of The Wild Hunt, though it's admittedly a long way from a perfect comparison. Meanwhile, the woman in white bears at least a superficial resemblance to various spirits and witches associated with the holidays. Her depiction and actions remind me of images I've seen of the Nebelfrau, a sort of mist-ghost who lures travelers off roads to their doom, though I haven't had a lot of luck finding much detail on those legends (she gets a mention in the eleventh episode in Benito Cereno's series on Christmas myths, which anyone reading this far would be well advised to watch in its entirety.) I'd also be remiss if I didn't acknowledge how much the underlying premise of this - namely of Death (or a figure performing Death's function) collecting souls during the holiday season - made me think of The Phantom Carriage, almost certainly the oldest surviving Christmas ghost movie that's not an adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
While the ending holds this back a bit, it really is both entertaining and unnerving as a ghost story, so fans of that genre are likely to find a lot to like here. Beyond that, it's a solid enough low-budget movie with some great performances, but that ending really leaves you underwhelmed.
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