Thursday, January 7, 2010

J.T.'s "Scary Shit I Need To See In 2010" list: Dread



As much as I love my fellow blog member, Doug Tilley, like a brother, I have found many reasons to hate Canada over the years. One of the prime reasons is the annual Fantasia Film Festival hosted by Ubisoft is in Montreal, Quebec instead of someplace like.... say... Virginia Beach...

Anyway...

This past July marked the initial screening of Dread and from what I gather, it is a rather faithful adaptation of the Clive Barker short story of the same name. I know what you are thinking, but Dread being faithful to the source material is a good thing because the short story is one of Barker's finest tales hands down and is clearly the strongest singular piece of work in his Books of Blood chronicles.

Unlike most of Barker's trademark splatter-horror yarns, Dread takes an uncharacteristically psychological bent and focuses on a deranged (if unflappable) intellectual named Quaid and his cold, relentless pursuit to understand the essence of what it is to be truly afraid.

Naturally, in order to understand this most basic and primal concept, Quaid's first order of business is to find out the very thing that terrifies someone and subject that person to that same stimulus......

..... over and over and over again.....

As with most of Barker's early work, you will probably see the ending coming a mile away but if the payoff of the movie is half as satisfying as the prose, then this will be matinee money well spent.....

.... even if Dread's 2010 debut apparently will come courtesy of the oft disappointing "8 Films To (Allegedly) Die For" After Dark Horrorfest film series which will span from January 29th to February 4th at a theater near you.

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