After Dark Horrorfest 4 Dread DVD

Product Description Stephen (Jackson Rathbone, the TWILIGHT saga) and Cheryl are college students making a documentary about what people dread in life. But they have no idea that their partner, Quaid, witnessed his parents being murdered by an axe-wielding lunatic and wants to make others experience his own personal horror. This stylish horror/thriller is produced by Clive Barker, the Godfather of modern horror/fantasy and the creator of the HELLRAISER and CANDYMAN series. Amazon.com Two very different horror icons--author Clive Barker and the Twilight saga, as represented by star Jackson Rathbone--are the main sources of appeal for Dread, a grimly atmospheric psycho thriller based on one of Barker's short stories. Rathbone is a retiring young student who joins a research team working on a documentary about fear. One of the number, Quaid (Shaun Evans), has an intimate association with the emotion, having seen his parents butchered while very young, and his involvement in the project turns deeply personal--and malevolent--as he attempts to inflict his own torment on his partners. Director Anthony DiBlasi, who produced one admirable Barker adaptation-- The Midnight Meat Train--and two unfortunate attempts in The Plague and Book of Blood, does well in achieving the level of visceral horror in Barker's work, but he stumbles in creating characters with enough dimension to warrant interest for the length of a feature (none of the actors can help much in this department, either, especially Evans, who's in over his head as Quaid). The result is occasionally disturbing but not more engaging than most standard-issue horror--a label that one would never apply to Barker and his fiction. The DVD, which is part of the fourth After Dark Horrorfest series, includes an inconsequential making-of featurette and a battery of deleted scenes; more interesting is a conversation with Barker, who served as one of the producers on Dread, and DiBlasi. --Paul Gaita