Dread DVD
Dread DVD (2009, Anthony DiBlasi, Lions Gate Home Entertainment)
After Midnight Meat Train and Book of Blood comes an adaptation of what, for my money, is one of Clive Barker’s most powerful short stories: Dread. Why? You might ask. It’s a good question, but one which is easily answered in the title. Because not only is this an examination of people’s innermost fears, it also forces us to face our own demons and ask how we might react in the same circumstances. There are no monsters in this one, unless you count those we carry with us. Like The Silence of the Lambs, this is pure psychological terror, and writer/director Anthony DiBlasi (part of the Midnight Pictures producing team) has expanded upon the original in a modern and quite organic way.
When student filmmaker Stephen Grace (Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone) encounters Quaid (Shaun Evans), his world will never be the same again. A tortured soul – his parents were both murdered when he was just a little boy – Quaid is now fascinated by what terrifies us all; looking into the face of ‘the beast’ as he calls it, our secret fears. He convinces Stephen to film subjects talking about this dread, helped along by editor and love interest Cheryl Fromm (Hanne Steen). But the further they get themselves into this, the more both Stephen and Cheryl realise that it’s not the film Quaid is really interested in at all…
As the man becomes increasingly unhinged, affecting everyone around him – painting then seducing Stephen’s best friend, Abby (Laura Donnelly sporting an effective and extensive birthmark), visiting a strip joint where one performer suddenly develops cuts all over her body, smashing up equipment – Quaid’s experiments begin to spiral out of control. Then eventually come back to haunt him…
Firstly, kudos must go to DiBlasi for simultaneously paying homage to and remaining faithful to the source material, while at the same time putting his own unique stamp on proceedings. The clown Quaid is scared of in the story, for example, is replaced, pretty successfully, with a faceless axe-wielding killer who drags his weapon of choice up the stairs one bump at a time. The fears are fully fleshed out too, here exchanging Stephen’s phobia about going deaf (which is given to another character) for the more extreme angst about losing his life in a car accident. DiBlasi also coaxes some amazing performances from the young cast. Rathbone exudes just the right amount of vulnerability and strength as Stephen, in spite of his own inner turmoil which Quaid exploits. Evans is on top form as a psycho who switches from asking for help one minute, to evil puppet master without a conscience the next. But perhaps the most applause must go to Steen and Donnelly, who give some truly powerful performances which account for a couple of the most disturbing and downright uncomfortable sequences of the entire movie (Steen playing a vegetarian trapped inside a room with only a piece of rotting meat, and Donnelly as a scarred woman who is eventually pushed over the edge in an effort to look ‘normal’).
All in all, this is one movie that will stay with you for a long time to come, with scenes that still send shivers down the spine just to think about them. Paul Kane
