Latest in the bewilderingly long line of generally worthless horror movies 2003 has had to offer, The Dead End isn’t nearly as spectacularly bad as most of the others – Final Destination 2, Darkness Falls, Jeepers Creepers 2, The Sin Eater,Wrong Turn – but despite its impressive atmospherics and sense of claustrophobia, it has neither the originality nor the suspense necessary to overcome its obvious limitations.
Not that it’s the most ambitious affair ever released, with a budget that doesn’t seem to have broken the bank, astonishingly grimy lighting that varies from black to pitch-black, and a cast of more-or-less unknowns who don’t do much to rectify that status – but Dead End has enough cunning, malice and pure sick black-heartedness to make it worthy of attention for genre conniosseurs.
The plot is time-honoured and slavishly faithful to the genre textbook, as a family of four drive endlessly onwards into the middle of nowhere in pig-headedly stupid fashion despite the increasingly sinister nature of their surroundings. They pick up a girl who’s had a hideous car accident and give her a lift, but she disappears as soon as they stop to call the police, and it’s glaringly evident to anyone who has ever seen a horror movie that the good family Harrington are trapped on a literally endless road pursued by some unspeakable evil...
Dead End has bucketloads of blood and gore to offer, for those who care for it, which goes some way to offset its general lack of cerebral competence. Silly, but not the worst.

85mins. Cert 15pg. Opens December 12