The Dread

2007 "Death lies within"
3| 1h35m| NC-17| en
Details

A young woman becomes filled with a horrible dread when she discovers that her brother may actually be something other than he appears.

Director

Producted By

Westar Films

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Trailers & Clips

Also starring Sally Pressman

Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful
Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
DigitalRevenantX7 CAUTION: Plot spoilers present.Esteemed young documentary filmmaker Teri Brewer finds out on her mother's deathbed that she was adopted & that she had a slightly older brother who was placed into a mental asylum following the brutal but unsolved murder of their parents when they were infants. Tracking down the brother (named Alex), Teri & her boyfriend find themselves in danger when a malevolent spirit that had been residing in a video game that Alex had been playing at the time of the deaths comes out & uses Alex's body has a host in order to kill again.The Dread answers the question of whatever happened to female THE EVIL DEAD star Ellen Sandweiss – she's still stuck doing ultra-cheap horror schlock twenty years after her breakthrough role. But unlike The Evil Dead, which was gleefully inventive & darkly funny, The Dread is neither of those things.The main problem I had with the film was the central concept of a malevolent entity residing in a video game – as a dedicated video game player, I find any attempt by the conservative types out there to blame videogames as violent garbage that warps minds as nothing but unfounded rubbish (these same types also decry genre films as violent & bad for children but think nothing about allowing young people access to firearms – this kind of hypocrisy is what gets me really fired up in anger). The story is filled with stupid plot devices that make it look really bad in the eyes of genre fans – security is tight in the soon-to-be-closed asylum but a pair of horny teens manage to sneak in using a long forgotten service door that nobody in the asylum's staff even bothers to remember to use when the crap hits the fan. Some of the characters have been poorly written – Sandweiss' character walks around always holding a pencil (& sure enough gets impaled with all of her pencils in one of the film's more entertaining deaths], while some of the 'crazies' running around are age-old clichés.The film does manage to compensate slightly by having a reasonably gory third act but the climax fails to coherently explain the nature of the entity – the early parts of the film make a vague claim that the creature is living inside the video game that the child was playing, but later on the creature seems to be born inside the host & can jump to a sibling when the host dies. Nothing is explained satisfactorily enough to carry the film along, leaving the film to collapse like a house of cards.
Foreverisacastironmess How dreadfully true... Okay I personally didn't really find this to be such a bad film, but it definitely sure as Hell ain't such a good one either! It gets points for genuinely unsettling tone and atmosphere, but it also loses crucial points for the heaps of sheer lousiness and stupidity on display!!! This was ~so~ lame! All that confusing as heck stuff in the mad little prologue? That was not a homage, it was a blatant, near-total rip-off of Halloween! They also manage to slightly rip-off "Alien" too, at one point! And then there's the graphics of the of presumably 'cursed' video game that warps little Alex's mind that were so laughably pathetic they would have barely been acceptable on the Atari! Cheapness was the number one issue of this movie in my opinion. I know it was incredibly low budget, but surely it couldn't have cost much to move the camera a little every now and then just a bit so that every single damn scene didn't feel so wooden! Now the actors also I didn't find that terrible. Yes they were all dull and not one of them seemed able to speak above a monotone, but they were coherent and passable enough that you could follow the story, and let's just say they were right for this movie and leave it at that! I actually enjoy this movie a little, as horrors go, it's definitely beyond mediocre and poor, but hey it's still a lot better than the anti-movie that was "Troll 2." To me it was never so unbearably slow and boring that I couldn't stand watching it, and to my way of thinking a truly bad film is always one that is boring. And even though it never delivered I found it very compelling, and the small music score was effectively haunting. If there was one thing this excelled at, it was mood. It was set in a decrepit insane asylum, that's always a good thing to have in your horror picture! This sure wasn't the most sparkling example of one ever though.. I'm not even sure it was set in a real one, as all that is ever really seen is few cell rooms and the same giant hallway over and over. It was nice to see a TV horror movie that wasn't slathered in low-grade cgi, but unfortunately the overall look of the film is just too pale and grainy, especially in all the scenes that feature the grown up Alex. I think the blank expression on the guy's face was supposed to be all sinister, but it came more across as him just looking a little retarded. And the red scarecrow/grim reaper thing that he somehow had the mystical power to 'astral project' into amid fits of crazy spasming and weird static electric flashes, was plain pathetic and wasn't imposing or scary at all. It looked like a bunch of cheap rags with even cheaper makeup. And it didn't help one bit that it was mostly heavily obscured by shadows and quick cuts. ::: There's no bull about this crummy movie, it is what it is,, and asks nothing of the viewer except that they shut off their brain and at least try and have a good time! The ending is pretty messed up. The climax of the film is, basically "Terry", after vanquishing her brother in a lame sword fight, ends up getting possessed by the same unexplained dark force that had taken over him, and the movie ends on the totally creepy image of her just smiling this evil little smile right at the camera with her now "Exorcist-style demonic eyes. And even though like everything else in this flick it comes out kind of weak and haphazard, I like the message that great evil can lurk in anyone, that anyone unwary can through thought and deed wind up losing their very soul... I found it to be a very chilling final scene. Regardless though, horror films aren't for everyone, and this is definitely one for hardcore fans of the genre. I thought for what it was, it was a good effort. I'll see ya.
hocfocprod I'm not going to go over the plot much because others have explained what there is of one pretty well. The movie has a lot of dead ends and leaves a lot of things unexplained. These, I feel, were the biggest weaknesses besides the attempt at creating atmosphere with a lack of lighting. Some scenes were spot on in their look, but many were muddy and lacked any detail at all.A mediocre monster, general gore and acting that was a bit below pro-level all give away the movie's low budget roots. I feel all of these are forgivable though when you consider the short amount of time they apparently had to shoot and the small amount of money. While I'm sure there are many filmmakers who could have done more with $150,000 on a video production budget, I can see how it bogs things down.Where budget shouldn't be a factor is the screenplay itself. Most of the time I wasn't quite sure what the hell was going on and by the end I just didn't care. There was something about a video game and a monster and a crazy kid who was now an adult. How the monster worked, what his particular powers were or how he chose his victims wasn't important I guess.So, if you're watching a movie tonight to be scared witless, see Oscar winning performances by actors who had time to connect with their characters, grade-A special F/X or a deep story with rich, full characters, give this one a pass. But, if you like to see monsters dismember people you can fast forward to the fun parts.
buddypatrick To start off the movie's title 'The Dread' is not captivating as it sounds like a terrible remake of a Japanese Horror. However the dingy title matches the cinematic quality as the film is utterly abysmal. With a shoestring budget that's been used depressingly bad its evident the creators of this film had no idea what they were doing; the plot, copious amount of cliché's, dreadful acting, screenplay, special effects; the whole movie is a giant train wreck that I'm surprised was ever released to DVD.The film starts out with a wannabe opening from Halloween; homage or not it's executed in a very uninteresting way and it is almost as though the creators are trying to pass it off as their own with an alter ego addition. The story is about a child's "inner evil" that murders his parentals in their bed whilst his real body sits in front of a scratchy pictured television screen whilst playing a video game – little tension and atmosphere as it seems to be shot on someone's digital home video. A decade or so later the now grown up child is locked away in a derelict mental clinic – does this not sound familiar already? Teri, the protagonist discovers that her long lost brother is the same boy who killed his parent's year's back and she decides to see her apparent brother with her own eyes. As the night goes on in the clinic with supernaturally locked doors the film turns into a very typical, badly written and ugly acted slasher. Even if the film had been executed professionally it still would have been insanely unoriginal and mind numbingly dumb. This is Halloween with minor alterations only this time it's very hard to sit through and even see as the picture quality is so bad.The picture quality is very terrible ranging from unintentionally too dark attics and hallways to audio that goes up and down throughout and the actors are as though they were taken from a bus stop. My drama class back in school could have done a better job at blocking and delivering lines than anyone in the film did. The only person who is acceptable is The Evil Deads cult star Ellen Sandwiess, possibly because she has about one or two lines and even then is the only actor who is mildly convincing. The special effects look like tomato sauce and water and even looked like water at times however at least the gore was there even though in an over the top fashion. Torn up torso's that look like mannequins made of foam with gore that looks like dried up PVA glue spilling from it is nonsensical. The paranormal being an element of the film is not an excuse either. It's pathetic and tries to use gore to make a scary villain which is a huge no-no. There is no budget that is an excuse for such a terrible film like this.Absolutely everything in this film was pathetic and I am surprised I sat through its entire duration. It makes one agitated that there are people out there in the industry with real talent and well structured ideas that never get their way into film. The Dread is a bad film and this is coming from a reviewer who has intentionally seen hundreds of films with bad reputations. The dread is way at the bottom of the barrel and won't even form into a so-bad-its-good cult film. Nothing can save you from the dread of The Dread. Avoid.