Editorials
Clive Barker’s ‘Dread’: Appreciating the Underrated ‘Books of Blood’ Adaptation
Clive Barker‘s stories often feature fleshy abominations and nightmarish hellscapes, but there’s a lot more to his writing than supernatural terror. His real skill as an author is in exposing the unmistakably human desires and anxieties behind these horrors and forcing us to reckon with that inner darkness. While we’ve seen several films that successfully translate this human side of Barker’s terrors, often directed by the writer himself, there is one underrated Books of Blood adaptation that perfectly distills why the author is a Master of Horror without the need for otherworldly threats. Naturally, I’m referring to Anthony DiBlasi‘s underrated 2009 feature, Dread.
Like the short story, Dread is a psychological thriller chronicling an ill-fated fear study conducted by a group of college students. In need of a thesis project for his Film degree, Stephen (played by Twilight favorite Jackson Rathbone) partners up with the mysterious philosophy major Quaid (Shaun Evans), who suggests an ambitious project documenting the source of people’s deepest, darkest fears. With a little help from fellow student Cheryl (Hanne Steen), the group begins to investigate the titular dread behind their volunteers’ assorted traumas, though it soon becomes clear that Quaid is planning on using their subjects as guinea pigs in his own sociopathic experiments.
While the film deviates from the original tale by rearranging certain plot points and motivations, it’s still incredibly faithful to the existential undertones of its source material. On paper, this premise may sound like yet another example of 2000s “Torture Porn,” but the characters and backstories are believable and detailed enough to allow for a more personal exploration of fear and its origins. Fortunately for us horror hounds, that doesn’t make things any less frightening. There may not be any cenobites on display, but there’s plenty of appropriately horrific imagery to remind you that this is still a Clive Barker story. From trippy axe murders to moments of emotionally charged body horror, Dread derives its scares from both psychological turmoil and physical suffering, succeeding as a genuinely unnerving scary movie (something akin to a more cerebral version of Saw) and an intimate character study.
It’s even scarier with context.
The film is admittedly a bit too edgy for its own good at times, containing a few instances of pretentious dialogue and some questionable needle-drops, but a collection of solid performances mostly makes up for this. Evan’s tormented yet charismatic interpretation of Quaid results in an almost-sympathetic antagonist, even as his obsession with fear leads him to torment his own friends. Rathbone also makes for a compelling lead, with his doomed friendship with Quaid becoming the true heart of the story.
Of course, the movie’s most powerful scenes are carried by Laura Donnelly and Hanne Steen as Abby and Cheryl, with both characters being forced to face their own traumatic memories during Quaid’s misguided attempts at “therapy”. Abby coming to terms with reactions to her unique birthmark is exceptionally cruel, but Cheryl’s stomach-churning confrontation with her childhood memories is one of the film’s depraved highlights, proving that no supernatural boogeyman can compare to the inner horrors of the human mind.
It’s this added character work that makes the inevitable suffering so hard to watch, as these believable traumas make the victims seem like real people instead of disposable “Torture Porn” fodder. In fact, Stephen’s car accident story is based on a real incident involving the director, and the film’s down-to-earth approach to real-life horrors like sexual abuse and bullying make for a surprisingly mature experience. On the other hand, Quaid’s trauma feels a lot like an exploration of the emotional aftermath of a Slasher flick, making some of the same points as Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2, where a lone survivor is forced to cope with the knowledge that the source of their pain is still out there somewhere.
The film student angle also adds a dimension of meta-commentary to the story, with the characters’ reactions to the fear study hinting at some of the strange reasons why us horror fans are so enamored with fear in the first place. We can’t help but watch as these poor college students become trapped in an almost operatic tragedy, culminating in a gut-wrenching finale that’s even more disturbing than the ending of the original story, but no less meaningful. This also leads to one of my favorite final lines in any horror movie, though I’ll avoid spoiling it for first-time viewers.
This will not end well.
Not everyone will appreciate Dread‘s low-budget indie aesthetic, with handheld cameras and dark, grainy footage making it clear that this isn’t a large studio production, but I actually think that the gritty visuals help with the film’s dreary atmosphere. The grimy urban photography really grounds the story in a familiar American college town despite the fact that the movie was shot in London (which is fitting for a Clive Barker adaptation). The no-frills aesthetic also enhances some of the film’s surprisingly effective moments of violence, adding another layer of filth to already-disturbing situations.
Curiously, the movie contains some subtle references to Barker’s other works, as Cheryl can be seen editing a sequence from 2009’s Book of Blood film, and Quaid’s eerie portraits (painted by Nicole Balzarini after a contest where horror fans were selected as models) are done in a style reminiscent of Barker’s less-surreal artwork. The director even had plans for another Barker adaptation with Pig Blood Blues, though that project sadly never materialized, making this the closest we ever got to a Books of Blood cinematic universe. At the very least, DiBlasi went on to direct the John-Carpenter-inspired The Last Shift, which is another criminally underrated thriller.
Ultimately, I think Diblasi’s Dread is one of those rare adaptations that improves on the source material by expanding on it. The original yarn may have been a short but sweet dive into fear-induced madness, but the film manages to also make us care about these characters as we follow them down the rabbit hole. It may not be a perfect movie, but the existential terrors of Dread will linger long after the credits roll, and I’d rank it up there with the best Books of Blood adaptations. I only wish Barker would tell more stories where the monster under the bed happens to be one of us.
That’s why I’d recommend Dread to any connoisseur of fear. Because if you don’t go out and find the beast, sooner or later the beast finds you.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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