Horror on a budget

Here's an original plot for a horror movie: a family of five in a car turn off the highway to take a shortcut and get lost in the woods, where bad things lurk and worse things happen. (Nearly) everybody dies. Nil points for originality, then, in this joint effort by writer/ director team Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa.

The fact that it took two of them to come up with a scenario that was one of the staple plot devices of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone suggests that we should be looking to them to provide the next Being John Malkovich no time soon.

As an exercise in genre film-making on a budget, however, it is near-perfect. Well-cast, with faces that border on the familiar without being well known, shot with economy and maximum use of atmosphere, and refreshingly free of excessive special effects or gore, this might be held up as a textbook example of how to make a movie with the minimum of resources and not leave your audience short-changed.

On the night of Christmas Eve, Frank Harrington (Ray Wise) is driving his twitchy wife, Laura (Lin Shaye), and bolshy children to his in-laws, a journey he has made for 20 years. For the first time he takes a shortcut and turns off the Interstate. Big mistake.

The mysterious appearances of a woman in white by the roadside heralds death for one of the family on each occasion; the arrival of a hearse with blacked-out windows adds to the horror.

By keeping our attention focused on the car, the film-makers maintain a claustrophobic atmosphere of dread. The tension is increased as each successive fatality brings a revelation about a family member (adultery, drug-taking, pregnancy). Details are kept to a minimum, allowing the imagination to overdose on horror; a bloodily severed ear and the horrified reaction of the onlookers tell you all you need to know about an unseen dismembered body.

Subtle it ain't. But in their own primitive playground Andrea and Canepa have their chosen elements under total control.

Dead End
Cert: 15