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)

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.

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 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.