Review: Horrorfest 10 – DREAD

On balance, the entries in the 2010 Horrorfest were not quite as good as the past couple of years, but DREAD stood out as the best.   Based on a short story by horror author Clive Barker, DREAD contains all the evil, horror and splatter we have come to expect from adaptations of his work, but it’s not really a horror movie in the traditional sense. DREAD walks a fine line between a psychological thriller and a visceral horror film. It’s solid and engaging with an interesting premise that leads to a gut-wrenching conclusion that might just turn even the most jaded viewer into a vegetarian.

DREAD is the tale of two college students, Quaid (Shaun Evans) and Steve   (Jackson Rathbone) who team up to create a documentary about the innermost fears of their fellow students for a class project. With the help of Abby (Laura Donnely), they put out a call for candidates and document their interviews on video. Manipulative and tightly-wound, Quaid has some strange ideas and cruelly persuades these troubled kids into revealing their most intimate demons; deeply personal secrets they would otherwise never dream of revealing in public, much less on camera. Meanwhile Quaid has psychological scars of his own, having been a childhood survivor of the home invasion murder of his parents at the hands of an axe-wielding madman. Quaid’s obsession with the project starts to grow to dangerous levels. To the horror of Steve and Abby he takes things too far, progressing beyond interviews to the actual physical and psychological nightmare of tackling fear head on, leading to madness, self-mutilation, and murder.

With DREAD, first time director/writer Anthony DiBlasi shows much promise and impressively builds tension. The home invasion flashback is particularly well-handled and Di Blasi doesn’t try to impress with distracting camera tricks and rapid editing like so many first timers.   DiBlasi paces the film well, giving us time to know the characters so when they meet their fates we feel genuinely bad for them. Like most Barker adaptions, DREAD is humorless and nasty in tone and the acting by the young cast is fine (though I kept wondering where the authorities and parents were – these kids all seem to have their own homes). Outstanding is Hanne Steen, who plays Cheryl, a friend infatuated with Steve who can’t see her own beauty beyond the disfiguring skin pigmentation that covers much of her face and body. DREAD is as thought-provoking as it is frightening with a shocking ending that will linger in the mind long after viewing. The perfectly titled DREAD is highly recommended.