Horror film reviews - Clive Barker's Dread

The scare-tactics for stories as a whole could be categorised into two distinct forms: Left and Right-wing horror:

• Right-wing: They are the monsters.
• Left-wing: We are the monsters.

Another term I’ve heard is Internal and External horror; but names aside, Right-wing horror is as common as a body in Baghdad. It’s simply easier to give you a ghoul to run from; but once in a while, a story draws your apprehensions inwards, against yourself. Dread, the short story adaptation of renowned horror icon and film Producer Clive Barker, Directed by Anthony DiBlasi (on his third Barker-adaptation), is a film that steps into the monstrosity of trauma, where embedded fears are studied and confronted in the name of science.

The synopsis: A psychology project spirals out of control when three college students begin documenting what other people dread most.

This film is relentless. It pulls no punches; and from someone rather desensitized from an almost casual subjection to modern-age gore, Dread’s clever cinematography sets off the nausea missing in response to the scenarios in today’s brutal films.

Dread’s characters are eccentric: they’re not cardboard cut-outs. Each has their own traits and lives, which is nice to see in a story—but the problem is that we know too much about them so early on that the seed of interest never has a chance to grow. Hence, the supporting characters took that seed; particularly Abby (Laura Donnelly), a defaced, innocent girl whose everyday existence in a shallow society is like a curse.

Clive Barker continuously encourages a step further than the conventional, a step for the art itself; and so praise him for giving Anthony DiBlasi the creative freedom so many Producers are afraid of. Dread is a film that stays with you after rolling. And so evoked are the viewers to think and feel during and after watching, that they may smarten up in the future before handing over their hard-earned cash to the brain-dead drivel surrounding us today.

The concept—though good—plays out in such a way as to miss the potential of a more frightening experience. Instead of us dreading Quaid, (Shaun Evans), the reluctant project organiser, facing his own traumas, we simply sit back and watch him be a dick as he dictates the project. We understand his deflection and thus don’t feel the bluster of a stranger like the others do. Therefore, both Quaid and fear itself lose some of their intimidation. All that aside, the deeply buried psychological traumas these characters confront—whether voluntary or forced—are painfully intimate and hang in the mind like the stink of a body in Baghdad.