Dead End

Frank (Wise) decides to take a short cut en route to the dreaded annual Christmas stay with his in-laws. His passengers soon realise something's amiss, and even the stubborn Frank eventually has to agree when they keep seeing a ghostly young woman cradling an infant on the roadside. Frank stops to investigate, and events rapidly turn grisly. Making the most of very limited resources, the French directors keep all the nasty stuff off-camera and visible only to the characters. But despite the sterling efforts of the cast and some deliciously dark humour along the way, the film is something of a cul-de-sac in terms of plot. Essentially a Twilight Zone episode padded out to minimum feature length, it's a sting in the tail picture. That said, Andrea and Canepa do more than enough in the first 80 minutes to compensate for running out of gas in the final five.