Review of Dread (2009) by Tom B — 23 Jul 2011

Rare to see The Dark Fantastique writing about something that could happen anywhere. What really made my imagination wander, was how the character played by Evans had to continue torturing people in order to ward off his nightmares. Essentially, he had to continue torturing people in order to fuel a healthy sleep pattern. That's just craaazy, because, that's unquenchable...Dark, dark stuff, still, I disagree with many of the others and didn't feel that the ending was all that bad. The part about the film that also creeped me out, was how after the guy who got his ears blown off came back in the house and found that axe, and after he planted in Rathbone's chest, he smiles and laughs as he wiggles the embedded axe, destroying Rathbone's internal organs, as Rathbone looks at him with a sense of surprise, as this insane deaf guy is chuckling while he's doing it. I think that was the film's adaptation of Clive's short story, which had the axe wielder also a clown. Don't watch it with a vegetarian on your first date! There's actually a scene in it that's extremely visceral and you see a timelapse of a woman in a boarded up room, with a piece of meat on the floor. Time goes on, and flies in the room lay eggs on the meat....Maggots ensue, and the woman ends up eating the piece of meat anyway. I wish they'd bring more of The Dark Fantastique's works of imaginative nirvana to the silver screen.

-Norman Patrick Dunnagan.