Indy Movie Review: DREAD by Emmanuel Paige

OVERVIEW:

The movie begins with an artistically rendered series of black and white shots of a scene where an unknown person is burying items near stone statues and performing some sort of ritual.

A quick, hard break to a party with a live band, heavy music, a mosh pit, and a group of guys that are crazy about playing Euchre. We meet the lead character, Russ, who is a beer drinking, cigarette smoking, rude and crude dude with a bad attitude. He is a bully and abusive toward women or anyone weaker than himself. He has a faithful sidekick named Murphy: a bandana wearing lanky red headed guy that is an accomplice in crime.

There is a fortune teller, complete with pentagram and candles, present at the party who tells Russ that she’s heard of him, that he’s a womanizer and an “asshole” and that his lifeline is fading and that he better make a change or he is heading for some serious trouble, that “what you do comes back to you.” She tells him he better watch his back. Russ thinks it’s a bunch of bullshit and doesn’t really worry too much about it.

A nun and a priest (Bill Hinzman – Night of the Living Dead 1968) are attacked by two demons that appear out of the night in a foggy haze, Dread X and Dread Y. This is where we get our first good look at the primary villainous force in the movie. The make-up is a bit wonky, and could have been executed with a little more pizzazz (green and black face paint and dark Goth clothing are the complete costumes), but after the plot develops and the story unravels the make-up eventually makes sense. The nun and the priest see that there is going to be trouble and they set out to do battle with the demons.

This is where we get to see some good gross out gore. One of the demons, the female, Dread Y, is eating a dead animal and rubbing the carcass across her face. We see some awesome guts and gore when she kills a guy at the party who is taking out the trash. The next day another guy is cleaning up the trash in the alley and he sees there is blood and gore everywhere and attempts to clean it up. There is a severed finger lying on the asphalt which he unknowingly steps on.

Russ and Murphy drive home drunk and Russ ends up passing out in the yard, his feet still in the blue Mustang. When he wakes up he wants beer, but they can’t get the car started, so Murphy goes in to get the jumper cables and discovers something sinister in the house. There is a demon living in the house and it has taken over their cache of stolen goods, hampering their illegal money making activities. They can hear it behind the door and see the red glowing light and smoke emanating beneath the door, signaling that something bad is in there. Needless to say, they don’t care to open it and find out what is in there.

The rest of the movie is a series of different scenes where we get to see clearer and clearer pictures of the Dread twins, and the particularly nasty way they like to shred their victims into clouds of flying body parts and pieces, showering blood and guts everywhere. The development of Russ and his sidekick, Murphy, as they prove just how despicable they really are, and that they are truly assholes. Russ figures out that someone has put a hex or curse on him and writes down all the names of women that he has known, or thinks, would try to cast a spell on him. His buddies set out to find the woman that put the spell on him. We get to see just how much these women really detest Russ, and they all say how much of an asshole the guy is.

There are some particularly nasty murder scenes with lots of gore. A few unexplained incidents where the cops would surely have been called and some questions would have been asked, and Russ and Murphy would certainly have had to answer them. These minor flaws can easily be overlooked without much concern.

There is a nice battle scene between Russ and his buddies against the Dread twins where they shoot at them with golf tees as blow darts, flaming tennis balls, and exploding two liter pop bottle bombs.

The whacky neighbor, who Russ has stolen many items from, sits back and watches the festivities while having a cold beer. Eventually, he even gets into the battle with an M16 machine gun and grenade launcher . . . but the Dread twins are indestructible. It will take something more than physical force to stop them.

The nun and the priest, gather up some holy water and go out to do battle with the Dread twins, and eventually they dispose of them, leaving only smoking clothing as they douse them with Holy water and prayers.

In the end, Russ meets the ultimate fate, where he is his own worst enemy.

We find out that the hex was put on him by a very close and personal someone, but I don’t want to spoil the movie completely.

In the end, the moral is: be nice because what you do comes back to you.

REVIEW:

Dread, a film from SCHOTTEN FILMWORKS in association with “In Lieu Of Flowers” . . . Productions. Directed by William Victor Schotten. Written by Laura Seli. Staring: Rick Reed as “Russ”, Jason Chatlett as “Murphy”, Bill Hinzman as “Priest”, Ashley Rozzi, Darrin Willgues as “Dread X”, Karen Fox as “Dread Y”, and many other supporting actors. House Band (cameo): Kitchen Knife Conspiracy. Music Score: Mark Cantanzriti

Pros: This movie impressed me with its audio and film footage quality. It appeared to be filmed with good equipment and the scenes and angles were done in a professional manner. The music drives the scenes, and the acting is not completely intolerable.

Cons: This movie lacked continuity, a sense that things were getting somewhere, with rough scene transitions, some wonky special effects, and a few minor inconsistencies in plot and story line.

Dread is a low budget independent horror film, and as such, should not be judged too harshly for its rough appearance. Horror films of this type are expected to have a somewhat unfinished characteristic, and their cheesiness is part of their charm. Low budget horror films have been around for a long time, and many of them become cult classics and eventually spawn multiple sequels.

Dread was viewable in one sitting, although a little slow in areas, and it was not so excruciating or nauseating that I had to turn it off. I’ve seen some low budget horror movies that were so intolerable and just impossible to watch that I couldn’t bare to finish them, but this is not the case with Dread. That is more than can be said for some of the big budget blockbuster tripe coming out of Hollywood these days.

In the end, I must say that I didn’t feel like I wasted the nearly two hours it took to watch Dread. You could spend your time doing far worse things. The characters were familiar, like next-door neighbors, and the setting was Midwestern America. The creatures were engaging and wicked, the blood and gore was kept to a reasonable limit, and the overall effect was horrifically satisfying. This movie will cure your horror craving.

This is a ripping good action horror story with everything that a horror movie buff will want. Since it is a low budget flick, don’t expect too much pyrotechnics or high-end CGI, but that is to be expected, and this movie will not let you down. It is a horror movie, and nothing more, and it does what it is supposed to do: frighten, gross out, terrify, and fill you with dread.

Laura Seli and William Schotten have struck a vein with their collaborative efforts in the movies they are making together. They seem to have a good feel for the true nature of the horror movie genre and what they are about and what they should achieve. Horror movies are not supposed to be cute or nice, and they should never apologize for being horrible. I think that in the future we will see some award winning material come from these independent film makers, and I will be waiting anxiously to watch the finished product.