Dread (2009)

Review by Mari Lynne Rupp



One of the Eight Movies to Die For, it boasts many young talents, including Jackson Rathbone of Twilight, showing just exactly what he can do.

Plot summary is at a small unnamed English college, Quaid and his friend Stephen (a film student), do a Fear Study as a school project, recording people talking about their greatest fears and worst times in their lives. Quaid however is quite insane and wants to take the fear to "the next level".

Quaid has more reason than any of them to "Dread", which hampers his ability to deal with reality.

This movie grabs your attention off the bat, showing in snippets a boy surviving the attack of an unknown madman on his family, watching them get slaughtered one by one. He convinces his schoolmates to start a project on discussing and examining other people’s fears and what causes them to “dread”, with each student bringing out what scares them most….What they most dread. For Abby (Laura Donnelly) it’s being singled out because of the birthmark that covers the right side of her body. For Stephen (Jackson Rathbone) it’s the car that his brother died in, a car that Quaid later buys to force Stephen to face the beast.

For Cheryl, (Hanne Steen) it’s the smell of meat that her abusive father carried home from a meat packing plant. And Quaid uses each students fear to push them to the edge of madness. For the first forty-five minutes this film is carried mostly on tension. You know something’s going to happen and you don’t know when. You know the fears being revealed will be the person’s undoing but how? Guessing that is part of this movie’s weapon, and you find yourself ‘dreading’ right along with the characters.

Screenplay by Anthony DiBlasi, based on a Clive Barker short story, you can’t miss with this movie. A definite nail biter, and pretty intense. 8/10