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During the last couple of years, it struck me that the quality of films inspired by the works of Hellraiser Clive Barker has significantly reduced. For now, Hellraiser, Candyman, and Lord of Illusions still remain the finest of the bunch. In any case, Nightbreed is worth remembering, even if at times it can be considered a guilty pleasure film. The Plague, Midnight Meat Train, and Book of Blood are not awful by any means, but compared to their book counterparts, they lack the raw strength and intensity associated with them. In all honesty, it is quite difficult to capture Barker’s rich world on film, and that is why, with only a few exceptions, I tend to give a lot of slack to the softs of book adaptations.
Without a doubt, Dread was never one of my favorite stories by Clive Barker, so I was not shocked that DiBlasi’s adaptation lacks entertainment. If there is no interesting, well-developed character, it is always difficult to execute a character piece. You are left with an insufferable pseudo intellectual torture horror film that wants to differentiate from its peers but fails at doing so. The sole difference between this and other horror films lies in the never-ending stream of long, monotonous dialogues. The abundance of nonsensical dialogues disguised as intelligent conversation does not make the production smart or enjoyable as claimed.
The setup is quite simple: Three edgy students wanting to finish their college theses agree to collaborate on a project that studies the concept of dread. A number of people participate in the interviews their worst fears are exposed and the results are made into a documentary film by the delicate Stephen Grace (Jackson Rathbone). While the sensitive filmmaker feels content with the end results, his partner, the deeply disturbed Quaid (Shaun Evans), is not nearly as satisfied. As a matter of fact, he believes they have accomplished nothing interesting at all. Thus, Quaid begins to take the assignment in a darker direction, which will ultimately test their friendship.
The first hour of Dread consists mostly of pointless dialogue. This would not be a problem if there was something meaningful to convey, but it appears almost none of it. Anthony DiBlasi, who produced the film Midnight Meat Train, serves as both the writer and director for this movie. His cinematic endeavor in fear and the human psyche is covered by ‘tips’ and ‘exploration’ which have been explored in detail in the world of cinema so many times, yet he believes that he is reinventing the wheel. Spoiler alert: we already know that people get extremely petrified when made to face their fears, and doesn’t the Saw franchise own such a complex idea? Surely there must be some semblance of copyright protection around it by now?
In fairness, amongst the many surprising gory scenes, there are a few love subplots that seem almost bearable, but all of them come under the category of overused and cliche. As expected, none are compelling, and they do almost nothing to prevent your attention from dissipating before the halfway mark.
Strangely enough, the most fruitful scene in Dread looks like it was taken straight from Barker’s own Nightbreed A charming family living in suburbia is mercilessly butchered in their comfortable house by a killer. The whole episode is witnessed by a small boy standing at the upper landing. The murderer becomes aware of the child, and he begins to ascend the staircase, quite slowly to the horror of the small victim. Given the rest of the film’s paucity of fresh concepts, it certainly is. While powerful contributions from Rathbone, Evans, and Hanne Steen are indeed captivating, there is nothing in ‘Dread’ that will remain after its watching.
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