Rob Haskell
I am confident that the producers of this movie wanted us to walk away feeling "disturbed." This didn't work on me because I was too busy being p*ssed at the directors for allowing such a bad ending to the movie to take place. The final awful acts take place by seemingly coincidence, yet the antagonist plays it off like another part of his scheme, and he throws away the side of himself that seems good by not acting like a hero after being the villain. I strongly despised the ending, I felt like it was not cohesive and threw the characters' developments under the bus in the name of creating something.... "f*cked up." One of the things about this film that I liked, up until the ending, was that the lines between "good" and "bad" were blurry. It seemed like the bad things were being done in the name of their victims for a while. They make it seem like the idea to put other people through Hell is justified. Until all of that gets thrown away for one truly bad scene, where our twisted villain decides to start doing things seemingly "just because." I'll admit I spent a lot of time thinking about this film as it played. The pace is fair- I thought there was a lot going on and most of the scenes did cut it for me, even if Stephen came off as an unoriginal guy in general. The ending made me not take the film as seriously because it did not fit with the movie as a whole. If you go in with this expectation, I think you will enjoy the movie more as you can enjoy the good parts and brace yourself for the rotten ending.
SnoopyStyle
College student Stephen Grace (Jackson Rathbone) feels normal despite losing his brother in a car accident when Stephen was 15. He befriends outgoing Quaid (Shaun Evans) who is haunted by the brutal murder of his parents in front of his eyes at the age of 6. Quaid suggests a fear survey, and Cheryl (Hanne Steen) joins with Stephen filming his thesis of dread. Not all of the stories are up to Quaid's standards. His nightmares are becoming full blown hallucinations. Stephen's co-worker Abby (Laura Donnelly) has a massive birthmark on half of her body, and she falls for Stephen. He, on the other hand, has a thing for Cheryl who is also haunted by childhood trauma of her own.It's a lot of story telling. It's not the most compelling way to go for a horror movie. There are killings in the first half, but I soon realize that they are all flashbacks, nightmares, or hallucinations. The fact that none of them are 'real' takes away much of the tension. I am a big fan of Clive Barker and this has a good dose of his sexual perversion and human frailty in this. I love Abby's look but quite frankly, that's the only good thing I took away from this movie. The grotesque killings look good but the movie keeps taking it away as being all in Quaid's mind. The acting is reasonable but nobody blew me away. The style and production value is limited. This one just doesn't have the needed thrills although the psychological horror of Abby is very interesting. Confronting fears could be such a great concept if done with real thrills.
elliott78212
Proof you can make a tense, riveting film on a shoestring and a reminder that Clive Barker is a great horror writer. Solid performances, well paced, often shocking and truly frightening complete with haunting imagery. Executive Producer Anthony DiBlasi who worked on the last few Barker films shows real skill as he steps into the writer/director chair and love of the material as he deftly handles it all making this one of my favorites. A movie built on developing the characters, that makes you care about them and what happens to them is a rare thing, solid performances from the main characters come together to make this one of the best horror films of 2009. Make it a marathon and watch the other films produced by DiBlasi and Barker Midnight Meat Train, and Book of Blood together exemplify of what can be done when a writer and filmmaker work together to bring more literal translations of the original work to the screen unlike so many book adaptations who's films barely resemble the novels.
Agnelin
"Dread" is an adaptation of a story by Clive Barker, and it starts out on a very interesting premise: exploring our fears. That's Quaid's motivation for his thesis study: he decides to interview people and have them tell their most vivid memories of being afraid. Quaid has a deeper, darker motivation for this: when he was 6 years old, he saw his parents being murdered by an axe killer. In his quest he will team up with Steven, an agreeable fellow student, and with Cheryl. Each of them has a personal story of haunting fear, too. Of course, as is expected, Quaid's childhood trauma and dabbling into people's darkest fears do not mix well."Dread" evolves as a psychological suspense -with moments of great intensity thrown together with scenes that are included just for shock value or, what's worst, as a rushed and stereotypical means of character-building (e.g. the scenes at the pub, at Quaid's studio or with the two girls that they hook up with at the beginning, where we're supposed to learn about Quaid's personality). Despite its ups and downs, though, it is a pretty solid suspense, with sobriety of characters, a compact and believable plot that follows well, and good subplots (e.g. Abby's story, with the best performance of the movie from actress Laura Donnelly). And one good point about this movie is that it is never boring.The last half hour is the most intense, as the accumulating events and actions come to their conclusion."Dread" is, in my opinion, a quite good movie in its genre. It's not ground-breaking and it may remind you of something you have watched or read before. However, it has good points, well-done scenes that will keep your attention, and it's always entertaining. Warning: don't expect anything at all like "Hellraiser".My score: 7/10.
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