Dead End is a 2003 movie starring Ray Wise (everything) and Lin Shaye (everything else). It's about a family who go to see their relatives for Christmas, but fortunately get stuck on an endless road to nowhere instead.
The movie is very cool and funny and it piles on the creepiness very nicely, with the family so distracted by typical family bickering at first that it only slowly creeps up on them: the realisation that they're the only car driving on this long road through the woods, and there's no one around to save them.
Part of the movie's genius is to situate a normal family car journey at the heart of its weird, purgatorial premise. The family are afraid to get out as they're surrounded by dark woods and nothing else, but they don't want to stay in the claustrophobic space of the car where they all have to put up with one another.
Dead End is very creepy and cool, well paced and has a mysterious vibe to it. It also uses creepy vocal sound effects well, which is getting pretty rare among the horror movies of today. Compare this year's own Deliver Us From Evil, which employs dark lighting to make it dark, but then has the possessed lady talk like your aunty trying to scare a small child.
Dead End is the best. Watch it alone at night and then go for a drive on a deserted backroad. Very cool movie.
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