As a child Quaid (Shaun Evans) witnessed his parents murdered with an ax as a child. He has nightmares and hallucinations about it. In college he gets together with two other students, Steven (Jackson Rathbone) and Cheryl (Hanne Steen) to do a study about fear and dread. Once the interview stage is complete, Quaid wants to take his study to the next level by making people face their fears.The film has all the elements of a good horror slasher: decent build-up, characters, nudity, cute ending, and some originality. For some reason it didn't grab me like it should have. Perhaps it was the non-likeability of Quaid, or the softness of Steven's character.F-bomb, sex, nudity (Erin Gavin, Laura Donnelly + others)

Based upon a short story by Clive Barker one wonders why this hadn't been adapted to the silver screen earlier . The source involved a student being forced in to torture recorded on videotape by an amoral intellectual voyeur obsessed by the human condition of fear . In the early 21st Century horror has seen a sub-genre branch out on its own , that of " torture porn " and the original short story could have been a very fashionable contribution of the sub genre , perhaps a present day version of the Michael Powell film PEEPING TOM . As it stands what we end up with a highly unsatisfying movie that plays up to the weaknesses of Barker's short story rather than its strengths First of all Barker wrote a rather talkative but streamlined short story . This is going to be problematic to anyone bringing the story to screen . The story proper that Barker envisaged doesn't really happen on screen until the final third . An impatient horror audience aren't going to pay their money to watch a character driven piece . Make no mistake the producers here aren't marketing their movie for a mainstream movie going audience interested in any sort of psychological horror but one where the intended audience are hardcore gorehounds so in order to keep the audience interested we're given several scenes that seem to be included to merely to keep the audience interested and some of these scenes are the lowest common denominator - one where the character is having a hallucination/nightmare/flashback . Very lazy writing on the part of the screenwriter and somewhat alienating too as these scenes are very unpleasant . In fact the whole look of the film is unpleasant as nearly every single scene is set in a dark and gloomy interior . It's not just down to the budget but also down to the fact that it's a British production and it's going to be difficult realising American locations in a low budget British production . This might receive some praise on an artistic level since the claustrophobic look and feel suits the story perfectly but it's a rather nasty and unlikable horror film and it seems a very long time ago Clive Barker was seen as the future of horror and had a massive trans-Atlantic hit with HELLRAISER

Dread is another film I can add to the list of terribly underrated Horror films. As a Horror freak I've had my share of films of the past 2 decades, and I must say watching this one has been a very rewarding experience.The screenplay and script are unique and well made, the story is very original and unfolds in an interesting and compelling way. This is not a fast paced thriller, but more of a psychological Drama with fear as a motive. It doesn't have any surprising scares like a Slasher or a Ghost flick might, and in a way it's more disturbing than scary. The acting is great if you ask me, the entire cast is professional and talented.Dread is a different type of Horror film, The Horror bit doesn't start before the final quarter, and until then it's mostly drama. Also, the type of horror isn't all that original, nothing surprising or shocking unless you've never seen "torture porn" before. However, the disturbing conclusion of the film is presented without any visual gore, more like "mental gore" and cruelty. Call it what you will, the effect is immense.All in all, Dread is original and well made, and I'm real frustrated with IMDb users for rating it so low. All I can say is that I hope you give it a chance, as it's a great film and definitely recommended!

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.