Line #21 Film/Dread


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dreadposter_4806.jpg]]
2	''Dread'' is a 2009 film directed by Anthony [=DiBlasi=] and starring Creator/JacksonRathbone based on a short story written by Creator/CliveBarker.
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4	Three college students set out to do a project on people's innermost fears. One of them, a disturbed young man named Quaid who witnessed his parents get murdered as a child, takes the project to the next level.
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6	Was part of the Creator/AfterDarkHorrorfest film festival. For the original short story see ''Literature/{{Dread}}''.
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9	!!This film contains examples of the following tropes:
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11	* AdaptationExpansion: Given that the source material is a short story, this is to be expected.
12	* AxCrazy: Not only the guy who killed Quaid's parents, but by the end, [[spoiler: Steven and Joshua]] as well.
13	* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler:Quaid gets away with his crimes with no repercussions whatsoever and is even in a better place at the end than he was at the beginning, having overcome his 'dread'.]]
14	* BigBad: Quaid, a madman willing to torture people to understand the nature of fear.
15	* BloodIsSquickerInWater: When Abby is in the bathtub and tries to scrub off her birthmark.
16	* BodyHorror: After being humiliated by Quaid, Abby proceeds to scrub off her birthmark, which covers half of her body, in the bathtub… with steel wool.
17	** She then proceeds to pour ''bleach'' all over the wounds in hopes of wiping it out.
18	* CanonForeigner: Abby
19	* TheChessmaster: Quaid
20	* DecompositeCharacter: Steven and Joshua in the film were both derived from the same character in the novella.
21	* DeathByAdaptation[=/=]SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler: In the original short story, Steven survives (albeit insane) and Quaid is killed.]]
22	* DiabolusExMachina: [[spoiler: Joshua returns and, assuming that Steven was working with Quaid when Quaid made him go deaf, kills Steven with an axe.]]
23	* DistinguishingMark: Abby has a birthmark that covers half of her body.
24	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Steven is about to fight Quaid, but an insane Joshua buries an axe in his chest. Quaid then shoots Joshua in the head, and drags Steven's body to Cheryl's room, waiting to see how long it'll take for her to get hungry enough to eat him.]]
25	* FateWorseThanDeath: [[spoiler:Cheryl is locked in a room with nothing but a knife and the dead body of her boyfriend. Compounding on this is the fact that she cannot stand the smell of meat due to her father's abuse when he was smelling of it.]]
26	* FreudianExcuse: Quaid witnessed his parents get killed by a psycho with an axe. The other characters have skeletons in their closet as well.
27	* GenericDoomsdayVillain: The guy who killed Quaid's parents basically just shows up, butchers them, spares Quaid for no apparent reason, and vanishes from the story. He exists entirely to give the BigBad a FreudianExcuse.
28	* TheHeroDies: [[spoiler:Steven gets an axe to the chest because an insane Joshua thinks he's working with the BigBad.]]
29	* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Quaid gets away with everything.]]
30	* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: [[spoiler:Cheryl is ultimately locked in a room where she has nothing to eat but her dead boyfriend.]]
31	* OneWordTitle: ''Dread''
32	* RapeAsBackstory: Cheryl was sexually abused by her father.
33	* SadisticChoice: Quaid puts Cheryl through this, both times in similar ways. First, by leaving her in a room with nothing but a cooked and salted steak despite her aversion to eating meat (due to her [[RapeAsBackstory father smelling of it while molesting her]]), then [[spoiler:leaving her in a room with nothing but a knife and her dead boyfriend, also intending for her to eat him out of starved desperation]].
34	* ShoutOut: To ''Franchise/{{Batman}}''. Quaid is the Scarecrow with Batman's origin story. The filmmakers seem to have taken this and ran with it, as the original character Abby is pretty obviously based on Two-Face.
35	* TheSociopath: Quaid acts like a normal guy, even somewhat charismatic. However, he's completely obsessed with conquering fear, and has no lines he won't cross to do it. The MaskOfSanity starts to slip when he attacks a woman for lying to him; soon after he starts torturing his friends to get better results. Even his FreudianExcuse of watching his parents die has nothing to do with any kind of care so much as fearing for his own life.
36	* TrappedAtTheDinnerTable: A macabre example. Cheryl doesn't eat meat because her father worked at a meat-packing plant and his clothes would always smell like it when he molested her. Quaid, a psychopath studying people's worst fears, locks her in a room with a well-cooked steak and refuses to let her out until she eats all of it. After about a week, she finally eats it in desperation, even though it's gone rotten.
37	* TraumaButton: Cheryl cannot stand the taste or smell of meat because her father worked at a meatpacking plant and smelled like it when he molested her as a little girl. Quaid locks her in a room with only a steak to eat [[spoiler:and later forces her to eat her boyfriend's corpse]].
38	* UnwittingPawn: Everyone becomes this under Quaid's "experiments".
39	* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: It's hard not to feel sympathy for Quaid given what he went through. For the first half of the film, at least.

Context Film / Dread