Entertainment

Road To Nowhere

The first film from legendary cult director Monte Hellman (“Two-Lane Blacktop”) since 1989’s unfortunate “Silent Night, Deadly Night 3” — written by Variety executive editor Steven Gaydos — has a great setup but not much in the way of a payoff.

The best thing is Shannyn Sossamon, as a young woman cast by a director (Tygh Runyan) in a potboiler based on a real North Carolina scandal. He falls for his leading lady, little realizing she’s actually playing herself, having faked her death.

Cliff De Young is the movie’s leading man, and Dominique Swain and Waylon Payne, respectively, play a blogger and insurance investigator hanging around the set.

While there are some giggles in the film-within-the-film (also called “Road to Nowhere”), the artsy-fartsy direction and flat-as-a-pancake acting (including a cameo by Variety columnist Peter Bart as himself) invites invidious comparisons to “Mulholland Drive.”

With the first three minutes (out of two hours) devoted to watching Sossamon dry her nails, you’d be right to expect this is going to be a fairly endless road.