Lake Dead is a horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 that was released as part of the 2007 After Dark Horrorfest.

Synopsis

The film follows a group of teenagers who inherit a motel on a lake, only to uncover a series of dark and frightening family secrets.

Plot

Three sisters, Brielle, Kelli and Sam are on college break. They discover that their grandfather has just died and he has left them a motel in his will. Their father, John tries to persuade them not to go, but the sisters ignore him and head off, accompanied by friends: Tanya, Ben, Bill, and Bill's girlfriend, Amy. Sam is the first to arrive, and while drinking wine in Room 6, two inbreds forcefully enter and attack Sam, where with a collection of duct tape, and iron bar, and an axe, they bind Sam's legs with the tape, place the iron bar beside her ankles, and use the axe head to force the bar through both her ankles. Afterwards, the three are in a boat, where the inbreds tie a badly beaten Sam's legs to a concrete block, and dump her into the water, where she is still alive as the concrete block pulls her beneath the water, where she drowns. The rest drive to the motel and meet the caretaker, an old lady who appears kind. After finding a lake on their property, the group of friends take a swim, not noticing that Sam's dead body is floating in the lake beneath them. After the swim, the friends return to their trailer, where they set up a small campsite. Bill and Tanya go out to the woods to get some firewood, and end up having sex (much to the chagrin of Amy). After encounters with large, strange-looking, unkempt men, the friends are terrified. Bill, Tanya, and Amy are butchered, while the remaining friends escape but are picked up by a mysterious, pushy cop. He tricks them into coming back to the motel where everything slowly falls into place. It is later revealed that the cop and caretaker are all a part of the evil scheme to make Brielle and Kelli a part of their devious plans. The cop and caretaker are in fact son and mother, respectively, and their family has been perpetuated by incest for generations (hence the inbred characteristics of the two aforementioned unkempt men). It becomes apparent that the girls' father had rejected the family "tradition" and escaped; however, their grandmother found out about this and concocted the scheme to lure them to the motel so that her son could forcibly impregnate them and continue the family line. The sisters manage to overcome joining their family's footsteps. Ben seemingly manages to kill both of the inbred men and attempts to rescue the girls from the barn where the cop has taken Brielle to rape her (in the process the grandmother is shot in the head by Ben). When they arrive at the barn Ben is shot unexpectedly by the cop, but the girls' worried father, John, shows up

Deus ex machina

A deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.-Linguistic considerations:...

 at the last minute and kills his brother, stating "That's how you fuck family", and ending the gruesome tradition. John takes his daughters and the still alive Ben to a hospital. In the end, four teenagers are shown going into the motel to check to see if it is abandoned. One of the teenagers has strange feelings about going into the motel. It turns out that one of the inbreds has survived, and he stares at the girls from behind a tree then screams.

Cast

• Kelsey Crane as Brielle
• Kelsey Wedeen as Kelli
• Tara Gerard as Sam
• Jim Devoti as Ben
• Alex A. Quinn as Bill
• Malea Richardson as Tanya
• Pat McNeely as Gloria
• James C. Burns as Sheriff
• Vanessa Viola as Amy
• Kenn Woodard
  Kenn Woodard
  -Career:Los Angeles based actor, Kenn Woodard, started acting at the age of fourteen in his home state of Louisiana. He began his professional career on the New York stage as Poe, in the Writer's Theater production of THE RAVEN, about the life of Edgar Allen Poe and has continued his professional...
  
   as Priest

Production

It was filmed in 2006 in Santa Clarita, California

Santa Clarita, California

Santa Clarita is the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County, California, United States and the twenty-fourth largest city in the state of California. The 2010 US Census reported the city's population grew 16.7% from the year 2000 to 176,320 residents. It is located about northwest of downtown...

 and Simi Valley, California

Simi Valley, California

-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Simi Valley had a population of 124,237. The population density was 2,940.8 people per square mile...

. It was produced by Alliance Group Entertainment and is director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 George Bessudo's first film. Lake Dead was written by Daniel P. Coughlin

Daniel P. Coughlin (author)

Daniel P. Coughlin is an American film and fiction writer with two feature films to his credit, Lake Dead, which was selected by Lionsgate for their 2007 After Dark HorrorFest - 8 Films to Die For, and Farmhouse , and a new film Leave which is currently in pre-production.Coughlin has always had an...

.

Release

The film was released as part of the After Dark Horrorfest in November 2007 and came out on DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

on March 18, 2008.