Dread (2009)

So much average

Best movie of this year hands down!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

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.

I am not a rabid horror fan. I like horror movies, but most of the ones that come out do not interest me. So when I saw that Twilight star Jackson Rathbone had made a horror movie (during the high point of Twilight's popularity), I knew I had to see it regardless. I give it 6 out of 10 mainly due to the ending.Dread is about college students who find out about people's innermost fears. One young man, Quaid, saw his parents killed when he was a kid and he's thoroughly messed up for life (understandably). He is obsessed with this project and with getting his way. Shaun Evans stars as Quaid and brings a craziness to the role. You can see his descent into madness after he stops taking his medication. At first, his obsession is small, but as he begins to hurt his friends, you realize he's completely gone. Excellent.Jackson Rathbone is Stephen, a film student needing a thesis project. He agrees to go along with Quaid and does a fear study, believing that it is just a school project. Rathbone is perfect as Stephen. He is completely convincing as a naive man who realizes Quaid's sociopath tendencies, albeit a little too late. At the climax, when Rathbone goes to Quaid's house near the end, you can tell that he himself has descended into madness. There is a reason why Rathbone is making his mark in the film industry; he has the talent.Laura Donnelly played Abby, my favorite character in the film. Abby felt discriminated against her entire life because she has a full birthmark on the right-hand side of her body. She hates it and believes it is why she is not beautiful (I beg to differ). During her segment of the fear study, she says that she realized in kindergarten that her birthmark was something to be ashamed of and every time she meets someone new, she returns to that fateful day. She also has a crush on Stephen and believes his rejection of her is because of the birthmark, when it actually is not. We never really find out what happens to her after she tries to remove the birthmark near the end of the film, and I wish we had.Cheryl Fromm is played by Hanne Steen. Cheryl is also a film student who partners with Stephen to work on the fear study. Steen was very convincing, especially when we learn why she can't stand to look at a piece of meat. I did not find her as attractive as Donnelly, however. She did very well when locked in a room in Quaid's home, although we also never find out what happens to her. I have my assumptions, but it would have been nice to have a concrete answer.Dread is based on the short story by Clive Barker. When they made the movie, they changed the ending. I know that Hollywood is famous for this, but I wish they had kept the original ending. I think it would have been more fitting to the story. With the ending that we are given, we see some good acting from Rathbone and Steen.This is another movie that does not rely on effects too much to tell a story. However, there is blood so if you are squeamish, you may want to avoid this. Unlike other horror movies, I did not find the blood count to be too bad in this one. In some films, I believe they go for shock value and try for as much blood and gore as possible. While it is present in Dread, there are only a few scenes that show it.This movie was effective for me in regards to thinking about your innermost fears. I know mine came to the surface while watching this film, along with a few others. It takes courage to admit what scares you the most, and even more courage to face the demon head-on. This film looks at both those aspects.I do not know if I will add Dread to my collection as I did not like it that much. However, I am glad that I saw it to show support to Rathbone. As long as Twilight fans continue to support their actors, Rathbone will have a long career ahead of him. Regardless, I will be eagerly watching him.

A philosopher who visits strip clubs and screws around with pre-adult lads? Definitely, the original plot has nothing to do with this.The book's Quaid is apparently a person who has not interest in sexuality, nor cares about anyone's welfare/distress or far less holds resentfully grudges towards younger not experienced college students and fight against them like kid in the schoolyard defending the product of his obsession.Quaid of the book is a tall nerdy older guy mentally detached from the campus habitat and very intimidating since the first moment Steve sees him. Shaun Evans character in the movie... isn't intimidating at all (either intellectually or physically) and anyway nothing in the set trigger your senses like the book does, the blame isn't in his performance of course, it lies just in who dared to make this whole thing. Not to mention Steve's actor and the purpose of his presence here as the new Johnny Depp fangirls hunter ("so at least we ensure, if only, the tiniest audience possible") and so on with all the elements of this movie made for teen minds.The plot follows an independent line from the true basis of the original story, taking some parts of it and misusing its sentences, and immerses itself in a frivolous, plain and silly world that nullifies even one of the most remarkable parts of the book that is the spectacular and perturbing final scene with a disturbed Steve as a clown.Clive Barker's book does not talk about revenge or shallow emotions but dig into the depths of the real fear of each character and focus specially on the concept itself, i.e.-Nothing to do with this.As you can see I am angry but not surprised with this. Angry because the story from the book is unique and this failure doesn't deserve its reference, and not surprised because American industry and money are always above the true art and after all it's a lost battle because most people is content with nonsense like this everyday.There's a comic about this story adapted by Fred Burke and illustrated by Dan Brereton which at least displays it following the steps of Clive's visions but in my opinion lacks energy, anyway, It reflects it better than what we have here in hand.Only thing I wonder is how Clive Barker could have allowed this aberration see the light or even support it if he really did.Don't get me wrong, I try to keep in mind and appraise the effort of every work but here It's impossible, this is a total offense on the book.

I waited years for this Clive Barker short story to be made into a movie because the premise of it was just too good to be true. As I sat down to watch it I was confident that I would enjoy the ending, because I knew the story. How hard could this be -- to keep to the story's main theme -- I wondered smugly as I hit "Play"? Apparently, too hard.I loved the acting, and I enjoyed the character development. If you have never read Clive Barker's "Dread," then you will enjoy this movie. It is well-made, I was not aware of budget corners being cut, and the follow-through with production was solid. So what is my issue? My issue is that *SPOILER* the theme of the short story was totally bastardized. Now that we have established that this is a SPOILER review, I will elaborate: Do not read further if you do not want to know about the movie's main issues or do not already know about the story's ending. Stop here, watch the movie, and then read the story afterward. Then I hope you will agree with me.In "Dread," Barker writes about an experiment that someone is doing on human subjects in which the subjects bare their worst fears. The problem is that the human subjects do not realize that the experiment will take on an illegal and horrific stance: The person conducting the experiment begins to hold the subjects against their wills and expose them to their worst fears. The character from whom we see second person single perspective for much of the story is afraid of being totally isolated, sense-wise, due to a childhood trauma. The experimenter finds a way to do this to him, and the victim breaks. Another victim is a vegan, and she is made to eat meat. In the end, the person hurting these subjects is hacked to bits by one of the subjects, one whom he drove insane. The brilliant catch? The mad scientist guy is terrified of clowns, and the person whom he drove nuts, who comes back to kill him, was found on the streets, placed in a homeless shelter, dressed in clothes that didn't fit him (like a CLOWN), and then returns to hack the man into pieces. Do you see the brilliance in this? It is so simple. Barker writes a story about complete and utter satisfying revenge coupled with the most awesome case of "do unto others" that may have graced the horror world in past years.However, the people who made this film decided to lose the brilliance and go nuts on the vegan girl. Yes, let's lose the main plot in favor of torturing a vegetarian, because we all like to hate those green pinko hippies.The ending sucked so hard I can swear that I was being pulled toward the TV when its final minutes played out. As I clung to the arm of our sofa and my legs reached horizontal status due to the black hole-like suction of the ending's worthless let-down, I felt this overwhelming sense of sadness. Clive Barker works so hard to make us do what Stephen King and Lovecraft do, which is to jump from two feet out when we go to bed. We can't just walk to the bed and lie down, because something is under the bed, waiting to grab our legs, and it likes to eat the heads last. (King says the head probably tastes the best.) Because Barker is continuing with this tradition of making us do late-night, last-minute, spastic aerobics, Barker should be rewarded with talented filmmakers preserving the main theme of his story. He wasn't in this instance, though, and it ticked me off.My advice to you? Watch this film first, and then read the short story. Save the best for last.