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.

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