Why does it always seem that the only way a horror movie premise can work is if one or some of the lead characters display a complete lack of common sense? Take Dread, for instance. In this 2009 movie based on Clive Barker’s short story from his Books of Blood: Volume II, college film student Stephen Grace meets some dude on a smoke break outside one of his classes, Quaid, who apparently is also a student, but that’s not made very clear. To me he’s a creepy dude hanging out at a school in a shitty Luke Perry kind of way. Anyway, right away Quaid starts jabbering on about human psychology and behaviour, and asking really weird questions, and where most people would butt out their smoke and move away from the stranger, Stephen thinks, “Oh, hey, a friend!” So, when Quaid shows up at Stephen’s work the following day (how did he know where he worked?) telling him that he really wants to talk and that Stephen should come to his house, it’s all just par for the getting-to-know-your-new-creepy-friend course. Quaid’s house, of course, is some run down number in the woods, where as a six-year-old he once witnessed his parents’ murders by a crazy, axe-wielding maniac. He’s been living there ever since, I guess, in abject squalor, reliving the gruesome act over and over again. Stephen shows up (because how can this horror movie get any steam if Stephen doesn’t take up this stranger’s invitation) and is not at all put off by the house or its location or the fact that there’s a note on the door telling him to come down to the basement. Will Stephen run away and forget he ever met this creepy guy or will he go search out the basement? That’s right…basement it is.

As it turns out, the basement is where Quaid paints nude portraits of strippers he hires, but that’s not why he invited Stephen over. No, he wants to work with Stephen on a film thesis that will study people’s fears. Sure, why not. So Stephen brings in his film editing friend, Cheryl, and the project is a go. Pretty soon they’re interviewing test subjects, asking them about their deepest fears, when they first felt fear, etc. It didn’t seem like much of a study to me, and not to Quaid either I guess, because he starts getting antsy for some real exploitation of people’s dread. So that’s when Cheryl steps in front of the camera to reveal that she was molested by her dad, who worked at a meat packing plant, and now she can’t eat meat. Even the smell of it takes her to a terrible place. We also find out that Stephen’s brother died when Stephen was 15. He got drunk and crashed his car. Stephen, then, is kind of afraid of cars. Or drinks. I don’t really know. So what does Quaid do? He buys Stephen a car ($1,200 on Craigslist!) so he can face his fears. What a swell guy.

Stephen digs Cheryl, by the way, but there’s this girl, Abby, who works with Stephen and is kind of into him. Abby’s got plenty of fears herself, see, because she’s covered from head to toe in one hell of a birthmark. She offers to be interviewed by Stephen privately for the study, where she takes her clothes off and tries to kiss Stephen. He rejects her, but not because of how she looks, but because his heart belongs to Cheryl. That hardly matters to Abby at all who is now even more ashamed. Seizing on this wonderful opportunity to take advantage of Abby, Quaid, the wonderful guy he is, swoops in, says a few lines, takes her out to the club, gets her to pose for him (she asks if he can paint her “normal”), and then fucks her. In the meantime, the relationship between Stephen and Cheryl blossoms.

Ok, back to the study. Quaid becomes increasingly pissed off with Stephen and Cheryl for not taking the study seriously (it’s just a school project as far as they’re concerned), so he flips out and destroys all the equipment. Cheryl and Stephen have finally had enough of this crazy dude who they befriended for some reason and are out of there. Quaid soldiers on. He calls back a previous interviewee, some dude name Josh who was once deaf as a kid and now lives in fear of going deaf again, and knocks him out, ties him up, and shoots a couple rounds from a gun right beside the dude’s ears, popping his ear drums. His next move is to push Abby to the brink by wiring the tape of her taking off her clothes into the college’s communications system so that every TV in the place is playing her humiliating strip tease. Then the recording shows the painting Quaid did of her as he splashes red all over it to symbolize her birthmark, then he holds up a note that says she isn’t normal. Abby loses it and decides that a bucket of bleach and an SOS pad is the only way to rid herself of her horrible defect.

Quaid’s next target is Cheryl, whom he finds snooping around his basement, looking at all his portraits, which are all now covered in bloody gashes. So, he locks Cheryl into a room with nothing but a bucket, some flies, and a plate with a giant slab of meat on it. And he’s filming it all, of course. Then he heads off to find Stephen. He picks him up in his car and takes him for a ride. Oh, it turns out Quaid has been drinking. Time for Stephen to face his fear! Stephen manages to get out of the car after a bit of a hairy ride but he’s then thrust right into Abby’s horrible situation. After finding her raw and bleeding body, he gets her to the hospital, where he sees one of those in-case-of-emergency axes hanging on the wall. Time to go find Quaid and make him face his fears. So off Stephen goes, axe in hand, and arrives at Quaid’s house to scare the fuck out of him. Quaid bests him, of course, and has something wonderful in store for Stephen. He ties him up and forces him to watch the video of Cheryl, who after having been confined for about a week breaks down and eats the rotting, maggoty piece of meat. Suddenly Joshua shows up with bandaged ears, finds the axe, and…well, people die. I won’t tell you which people though. You’ll have to find out on your own. If you want to. This movie isn’t that great. Some gore, some tits, and the action picks up near the end when Quaid finally goes mental, but it took a long time for that to happen. Up until then it’s just a bunch of bad decisions and verbal nonsense.

Check out the trailer for Dread!