Dread

May 4, 2010 by Editor
Filed under Film Reviews

Dread (2009)

Directed By: Anthony Diblasi

Review Written By: Amish Zombie
Mondo Film & Video Guide Contributor
IMDb.com Link

Dread comes to us in the newest installment of the After Dark Horror-Fest, 8 Films To Die For series. My opinion of this entire series is that it’s rather hit or miss at best. So I proceed with much trepidation when faced with watching this film. I’m a die hard Clive Barker fan, but even with that in mind, I’ve seen some god awful crap delivered to me in the “After Dark Horror-Fest” package. I went into Dread with as much of an open mind as I could however. Clive Barker’s Dread, centers around two men who start a college thesis about, well…dread. They start out by interviewing college students about past experiences, childhood fears, horrific and traumatic events…blah blah blah.

Dread plays out more like a bad reality show where the viewer, us, doesn’t give two shits about these students, at least I didn’t. It’s at this point, the movie begins falling right into the notoriety of the After Dark Shit-Fest curse. As Dread progresses, the two students start to dive further into exploring dread, and it starts to get fairly decent. There’s major tension between the two, as character development gives us reason to hate one of them while feeling sympathetic for the other.

As the experiments in dread get more and more dangerous , the movie certainly picks up with a very self conscious birthmark covered woman, who gets exploited, then ends up trying to scrub her birthmarks off with bleach and steel wool. This sequence alone, while it didn’t last incredibly long got my goosebumps up in arms. It doesn’t stop there either. Next up, a vegetarian, a die hard vegetarian, who’s locked in a room with bare essentials and a cooked steak, and a question? How hungry do you have to be to break and eat meat? I’m sure vegetarians around the world will voice their opinion’s about this scene and I say to them, it’s just a movie hippies, relax…

Dread concludes ( don’t worry I’m not gonna give it away) leaving me annoyed and angered. The movie just starts getting speed, and makes us give a shit about the characters then “poof” the movie ends. I rarely say this, but I would have liked to see another 15 minutes to explore the ending that’s left to our imagination. Maybe a re-edit to cut out some of the slow drab. Some of the “we don’t give a shit” material from the first thirty minutes of the movie, and insert it at the end, where the viewer (like myself) can finally get into it… Taking a moment to talk about the After Dark Series, like I mentioned early on, they are very hit or miss. I can remember being so excited about the first set of movies and for the most part the first eight films were great. Now, before you blowhard elitest’s shun me for my opinion, remember that it’s just that. Opinion! Moving on, the second set of eight films were so god awful.. The only turd worth a damn being the French movie “Frontier(s)” . I stayed far away from the third installment and read several reviews that justified my decision. Now we have the fourth installment and my first venture into them proved to NOT be a horrid mistake. I’m not saying Dread is a fantastic film, but in comparison to other After Dark Shit-Fests entries, it’s certainly not terrible. I give this one a strong 6…

Amish Zombie is a contributor for the Mondo Film & Video Guide. He’s also the Co-Founder of the Don’t Bite My Arm Video Review Vlog. You can email him directly at amishzombie@mondo-video.com