Can DREAD and THE HILLS RUN RED Fix Horror?

By SpookyDan

For the past few months it has seemed like horror films have taken a turn for the worse. Even the good films were just good, not great. The last couple horror films to really grab me were Let the Right One In and Martyrs. I had seen both of those films over a year ago, and while some others have come through the pipeline that I genuinely liked, nothing has really shaken me up much (not including Repo! of course). Quite frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much horror heading our way right now that I am super excited about either…Until this week!

Two upcoming horror films were screened early this week for press and buyers and both films rocked!

DREAD and THE HILLS RUN RED!

First up: Anthony DiBlasi’s adaptation of the Clive Barker story DREAD was an astonishing grown up horror film. On the surface it looks like a typical horror film, nudity, blood, pretty teens in college making a documentary about people’s innermost fears, but the typical is just the top layer of gloss. This is a slow burn character piece that never got too slow to bore me (I hate slow films). Dread takes the Hollywood convention of pretty young adults, and then dares to let them get UGLY! Diblasi’s shows some real visual style delivering on the gross and disgusting while dragging you through the dark and cruel journey, that requires the audience to posses some smarts. Dread may very well be the best Clive Barker adaptation in film history! This is a serious horror film for anyone looking to get beyond taking a group of teenagers to the woods and kill them.


Second up: Dave Parker’s The Hills Run Red. Here we have a David J. Schow penned film about a group of pretty college kids trying and find the truth behind a notorious film, with a legend of mystery surrounding it. They head off to a cabin in the woods to see what they can dig up (a group of teenagers in the woods getting picked off.) nudity, blood, great score…all seemingly “typical” horror fare. Just as you are rolling your eyes thinking you have seen this movie before, the predictable horror convention are all shattered! Parker did the impossible, and he actually surprises you! Like Dread, Parker takes the typical Hollywood Horror convention and shakes it up! The Hills Run Red is genuinely grim, violent and brutal. Hats off to Warner Bros for making a tense film that horror fans will embrace!

***side note: Bill Sadler ROCKS! He virtually steals every scene, and is as charismatic as he was in Die Hard 2.


Both Films are giving a breath of fresh air to our genre that seems to have been resting on its laurels for way too long. And they both do the same exact thing to be so fucking effective, they break convention! They take the audiences expectations and really turn them. This is exactly what horror needs right now, to be reinvigorated with some fresh new ideas! Dread and The Hills Run Red are two films that are not afraid to be…well…HORRORIFIC

One weird similarity in both films: Both films are about students making a documentary, could this be a new trend in horror?