A couple of of years ago we had a little flood of Dutch horror films. From the gory, zombie and amateuristic (but amusing) “Horizonica” to the much more professional “Dood Eind”. The title, by the way, is a slightly corny word play. It is just the literal translation of “dead end”, but this combination of words is no used in normal Dutch. In any case, a group of friends go to Scotland for some sort of reunion holidays. Two aggressive dogs scare them into a haunted house, not a very original basis for a horror film. The first half of the film is quite good with perhaps not magnificent special effects but nice enough to create a pretty pressing atmosphere, even reminding of Jap-horror here and there. The horror is minimalistic and mostly leans to the atmosphere. In the second half some sort of story unfolds giving more background of the horrors of the house and this is where both the acting and the atmosphere become a lot less convincing. The first half surely makes this film a suggested watch when you like the horror genre though. Last year I saw Van den Eshof’s next film (a short) at a local horror-shorts festival (“Harry Doright’s Prelude To Hell”). Since, the director has created three other films, two shorts and a full-length, so he is quite productive.
