One thing that you can be certain of, when it comes to a movie adaption of a Clive Baker story is that there will be pain and suffering, mixed into a morbid plot, spiced with occult events.
The indie film Dread, has almost all of those ingredients besides the occult stuff. It’s more like a physiological thriller, where the occult elements have been replaced with common human cruelty, instead.
Which I think can be quite frightening, if not worse.
The movie revolves around three students that will film a documentary about other people’s fears. First, they interviews their subjects about what they fear the most and why. However, one of the students comes up with a rather macabre twist to their assignment; why don’t expose the subjects to what they fear and film that, too!
The man behind the camera was Anthony DiBlasi, a man that is no stranger when it comes to making movies out of Barker stories. He has produced The Midnight Meat Train, Book of Blood and The Plague, movies that all turned out to be very good and creepy, in my opinion. He will also work with the remake of the 80’s classic, Hellraiser, as well.
Dread is included in the After Dark’s HorrorFest, starting January 29, 2010 and I hope it’ll come out on DVD/Blu-ray shortly thereafter.
The trailer below is the Korean version, hence the foreign letters, which I think is the best version, I have seen. What do you think, doesn’t it look rather intense and scary, even though it lacks of occult elements?
Box of Horror 