Michael Ledo 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)

Ruby Chang Admittedly, I was only paying some attention to the first 30 minutes of the film, but I only did so because the dim, harsh lighting and the constant use of rock (?)/modern songs were both getting on my nerves (irrational, I know, but they just happen to be two of my film pet peeves). It seemed overall pretentious. When I finally tuned in, however, I did like the concept. Very interesting and unique. Of course, the "pushing human limits" concept is not very new to the horror genre, but the way this particular film framed it definitely is. All of the characters were, quite frankly, bland to me. They were there and they existed, it seems, mostly to push the plot. Which is fine, but as a result, none of the acting really seemed noteworthy (well, except Quaid - he was noteworthy in that he seemed to be overacting all the time? I'm not exactly sure what it was, but he had some kind of exaggerated affectation that distracted me continuously). The plot itself was a little frustrating because of some of the ridiculous choices the characters made. I won't go into further detail, but I thought the end could have been avoided quite easily (I know, I know that much of horror relies upon people's mistakes, but all I'm asking for is that the mistakes seem realistic rather than just silly for the sake of plot). To sum it up: interesting concept but the execution of it fell short.

Spikeopath Dread is a deliciously spiteful British/American produced horror adapted from a Clive Barker short story. Plot has three college students meeting up and working together on a documentary about the nature of people's fears. As things progress it becomes apparent that one of them has an ulterior motive.Director and screenplay writer Anthony DiBlasi spends a considerable portion of the film establishing the psychological make-ups of the principal players, which is a key component to making the film work. Theo Green's music trundles away menacingly during this portion of pic, while Sam McCurdy's photography is on the money, with unnerving shades of green, reds and blues stripped back for a perfect troubled world feel.Once the worm turns, and motives and mental anguishes show themselves, Dread reveals a cruel hand of such psychological force that the impact is troubling. Yet this is no torture porn picture, the gore is minimum and this for sure is not a slasher type of film either. It's a slice of mental cruelty mixed with a damaged seed, two bad aspects of human nature crashing together to assault those interested in the psychologically based splinter of horror.Oh and the ending is a cracker-jack, guaranteed to jolt you, for better or worse! 7.5/10

the_zookeeper 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.