Dread

I actually have to get some Clive Barker books and read some of his stories. This is again one of the adaptations of one his stories and it's a pretty decent effort. The idea behind the story/movie is pretty great and has to do with human behavior/fear. While other movies might have exploited the "torture" part of that more, this movie is more subtle.

Of course you could see this as a bad thing, but I quite liked the movie. Even/despite characters, that are all more or less not likable. You are not really rooting for one of the characters that much, they are all human, with flaws (some psychological, some physiological). The good thing is, that the movie does stir away from the books ending. Some saw it as something bad, but I like when the movie takes a chance (and succeeds in my opinion)!

Three students decide to study people's fears for a video documentary college class as sort of a "fear study". Initially they simply interview their subjects but then one of the students progresses to setting up situations where the subjects are forced to confront their fears.

Pretty much universally positive reviews from horror magazines and websites were given to this film, and I feel bad that I cannot be as supportive. While I think this film has a lot of strengths, and may be better than the average film, it also has some weak points, too.

I have to say the film is very admirable with regards to the gore on the topless dancer, and the dismembered girl in the bed. Other gore scenes were also decent, and there is no short supply of blood, and a special effects that shines beyond the budget. I also enjoyed the gritty sex scene, reminiscent of the style of "Derailed" (though the sex scenes are quite different).

The film as a whole has a lot of sexuality to it, which I find to be a flaw. I liked the painting of nude woman, with the addition of her blue hair, but soon realized it was just he first step towards more and more nudity. Usually, I am the last one to frown on nudity, gratuitous or otherwise. But I felt this film was using it as a crutch, that despite having a strong story, they felt they could not get by on merit alone. And that is a shame.

As far as being compared to recent Clive Barker films, this one is clearly better than "Book of Blood" (which was just boring), and on par with "Midnight Meat Train". I may like "Train" slightly better, but both have their strong and weak points. Barker's original story is roughly 40 pages, including some casual references to Kant and Bentham (and unfortunately Dickens). The film tends to ignore these intellectual touchstones and veers off into more pornographic territory. They do, however, take the "fear of meat" to a new height.

"Dread" was chosen as the 2010 horror film of the year by HorrorHound contributor Dave Kosanke (with Jon Kitley agreeing). Kosanke thinks the film is "primordial and raw" and "even manages to one-up the story". Another HorrorHound contributor, Aaron Christensen, disagreed and felt the film was too long and would work best as an anthology coupled with one or two other Barker stories. Incidentally, he chose "Black Swan" as the year's best.

Thankfully, none of them picked "Harpoon" like Aaron Crowell did (that film had few things right going for it). And I have to agree with Christensen that "Black Swan" easily trumps "Dread" (though I think Adam Green's "Frozen" was also a worthy contender). I would not put "Dread" in my top three for 2010.

I would, though, not necessarily endorse Christensen's idea that this be squeezed into an anthology. While "Book of Blood" clearly ran over its needed time, this film seemed to go over by mere minutes for me. The writer added enough to the original story to really have it stand on its own two legs. I would say that it could be trimmed five or ten minutes, as some scenes just went on too long for me. But it has enough story and depth to really be its own film.

Ultimately I do not see this being one of the strongest films of recent years. The gore effects are amazing, and I hope the crew behind that goes on to bigger things. The cinematography is also stellar. But beyond that, I do not know. I feel it went on a tad too long, and what should have been a story about "dread" became too exaggerated for me. It pushes the level of realism too hard and enters a surreal stage. And that is not dreadful. Psychologically unstable, maybe, but not scary.

Based on the Clive Barker short story, Dread, which made its world premiere at the 2009 edition of Montreal's Fantasia film festival, is remarkable on two fronts: Barker's striking departure from his traditional macabre story lines, and Anthony DiBlasi's impressive directorial debut.

The story unfolds with two college students, Steve (Twilight's Jackson Rathbone) and Quaid (Shaun Evans), agreeing to work together to create a documentary of people's innermost fears. The two put out a call for candidates and document their interviews on video.

An expert manipulator, Quaid is able to coax these troubled souls into revealing their innermost demons; deeply personal revelations they would otherwise never dream of discussing in public, much less on camera. Meanwhile Quaid harbors deep seated psychological scars of his own, having been a childhood survivor of the brutal home invasion axe slaying of his parents at the hands of a mysterious psycho.

Espousing the belief that by confronting one's ultimate fear an individual will either overcome their phobia or be consumed by it, Quaid convinces the more demure Steve, and friends Cheryl and Abby to participate in the study. Unknown to everyone involved, however, is Quaid's desire to take things to the next level, progressing beyond mere interviews to the actual physical and psychological nightmare of tackling their fears head on.

DiBlasi displays a remarkably talented hand at spinning a yarn that incorporates introspective, character-driven drama and some spectacularly jolting and emotionally moving sequences. While deviating out of necessity from the plot structure of Barker's original story, which didn't provide much "meat" for a feature length film, Barker equally deserves kudos for providing DiBlasi with a twisted tale that is firmly rooted in the real world, where human cruelty is infinitely more tangible and terrifying than anything the supernatural can invoke.

Led by Rathbone and Evans, the young cast turns in uniformly strong, nuanced and intensely emotional performances not typically found in this genre. Among the standouts is Hanne Steen, who plays Cheryl, a friend infatuated with Steve who bears the curse of a disfiguring skin pigmentation that covers a third of her face and body. Steen deftly manages to convey her character's sensitivity and long held pain in a manner that the viewer can readily attune to, earmarking her as a future talent to watch.

As debuts go DiBlasi's Dread is as solid, slick, engaging and thought provoking as it is terrifying, making this a must see, not merely for fans of the genre, but anyone with untold skeletons in their closet.

I haven't been very impressed by movies based on Barker's work as they tend to be on the silly side and so it is with some apprehension that I watched this low-budget flick, shot by a first time director and based off a short story by Clive Barker.

The movie starts in a pretty conventional fashion and along the way, the plot is fairly conventional but things do pick up. I like how director Anthony DiBlasi doesn't shy away from horrific scene yet doesn't feel the need to overly polish the gore and special effects. A lot of films this decade (one only has to think of the Saw series) have raised the bar to show in minute details of body mutilation in their glory. DiBlasi takes a middle of the road approach. Part of the gore is suggested and left in the shadows, part of it is shown.

This is obviously a film on a budget and corners were cut. The lead and supporting actors are doing their best but uneven from one scene to the next. The action scenes are done as well as DiBlasi probably could on a budget as a first timer too but you will have seen much better.

The main weakness in the movie is the implausibility that authorities are never involved. It just doesn't seem to make sense from a plot point of view and also seems weird from the characters' point of view as well. There is also a vague sense that you've seen all of this before, even though it is definitely its own story.

DiBlasi also wrote the screenplay for the movie and I wish someone else had given it another pass. Stronger characters and a few more story details might have covered the flaws in this movie but overall, it picks up very well in the second half and unlike most low-budget movies, I was not bored to death by this one but started to care more.

Worth a solid 5.

Having watched around 600 horror and thriller movies over the course of the last 20 years. I have rarely come across a horror flick that has the intellectual prowess of "Dread". This is a very well done adaptation of Barkers short story, and has kept the dark and ominous feel of the original.

The cinematography is masterfully done while keeping an almost home movie feel. The flickering lights and dark sets lend an eerily dreamlike feel to the bulk of the movie so that when the brighter scenes appear the contrast is quite stark.To say this movie is disturbing would be an understatement. The decent into madness depicted here is powerfully dramatic and quite intense. Not only is there violence, gore, and blood, but a realistic view of trauma inflicted psychosis becoming complete madness.

The bottom line is this. The ability to suspend disbelief is the cornerstone of any good story and this one delivers in buckets.