Question: Movie VS Story (POSSIBLE SPOILERS) - Dread (2009) Discussion

[–] jallen99 14 years ago

* SPOILERS *

From my memory (and I read it over 20 years ago), the story ends with the guy who was made deaf going up the stairs with an ax causing the main character to relive his childhood trauma and hide in the corner until the guy comes in and kills him. (A version of this happens in the movie, but not with the same conclusion.)

I only remember three characters in the story:

1) the main guy (who I believe was afraid of a CLOWN with an ax coming to kill him, I don't know if this was related to a real event or not)

2) the guy who is afraid of losing his hearing due to a childhood trauma (I think this guy and the movie's main character are the same in the story - I don't think there was a guy who's brother was killed in a drunk driving accident)

3) the girl who won't eat meat (I think she was just a vegetarian, not with a huge dramatic event in her childhood like the girl in the movie, but I could be wrong)

To my knowledge, there wasn't any character with a birthmark over half her body. (I've never heard of this kind of birthmark and the color seemed all wrong. I have a red wine colored birthmark on my temple and I've seen some that cover half someone's face, but the one in the movie seemed very extreme by real life standards.)

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[–] DrmWmn 14 years ago

Thanks for answering! I appreciate it.

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[–] damalc 14 years ago

jallen99 is right. the guy was scared of clowns in the short story. the one that he made deaf gets released and ends up in a homeless shelter or something like that, wearing thrown away clothes. so when he comes back his face is bruised up and is wearing ill-fitting clothes and looks clownish when he kills the other dude (sorry about not remembering names). and the scared-of-meat girls gets released.

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[–] MrBelette 14 years ago

So the movie ending is better then.

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[–] Jakksid 14 years ago

No. The film completely misses the irony and the whole point of the short story.

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[–] thesoulmuncher 13 years ago

completely agree. they absolutely ruined the ending - possibly a studio decision for possible future sequels.

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[–] damalc 14 years ago

not necessarily. the idea of the guy who terrorized everyone else getting killed by an image of his own fear seems fair to me.

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[–] gothor 11 years ago

The is another one of those adaptations where some genius screenwriter reads a perfectly good story and says to himself, "All right, that's good, people like it for some reason. But what'd be REALLY neat is..."

And in the case of Dread, as with so many other adaptations, that's when things went horribly wrong.

The ending was a cheap grab for shock value and "disturbing" content. It has none of the poetic justice of the story. Barker's tale was grim and sick, but at the end it turned from torture porn to Tales from the Crypt. That was part of the charm, a charm which you'll never find in this grim little movie.

Were any of the changes for the better? Usually when a film adds original content, some of it is neat, but in this case, I'm kind of drawing a blank. The main hero was so generic, I don't really see the point of making up a new character and then giving him nothing to work with. He sucked the life out of the movie every time he walked onscreen. I hate the idea of people being kept after they mentally broke down.

Part of what made the story so creepy is that once someone was broken, they were released -- that's how confident he was that they were ruined beyond the point of turning him in. Again, a point lost on the screenwriter.

What a mess.

________________________________________
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[–] patatas_toes4 14 years ago

I wouldn't really compare the two like that. Yes the movie is supposed to be based on the short story. But sometimes adapting movies from stories or books a lot of the time isn't as simple as you may think. I think they did the best they could to develop the movie from the short. It was a good adaptation in my eyes. Also both endings are great in their own way. The short has a more satisfying ending with the guy having been killed by the thing he fears the most. The movie however differs in that it's an ending that is more realistic. Morbid and synical it may be to say that the innocent people usually suffer and the people in the wrong some of the time get their way. Both good endings I think. If they'd used the short ending however I believe that a lot of viewers (not fans of the short) would have been dissapointed by the some what optimistic ending, if you could call it that. That's just my thought though. Both good endings I think.

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[–] ScarecrowX 14 years ago

Awful ending in the film/. predictable and dull, yet anothe rmdoern horror has to end with everyone dead. It's not edgye or dark any more its tired, it's done to death. Just take the Saw films, six films of main character getting screwed over in the end.

Dread could have done soemthing more. Thes short story had a fantastic endign that kept to the themes. One strong them is "dread", you know, the whoel point of the story. The film's last shot is stupid and random, he's no longer makign someone face their dread. He's asking a woman to eat a dead guy. yeah, sure, that's horrible... but I think pretty much ANY person would fidn that a disgusting thing to be told to do. So its utterly removes the whole point of facing their own personal ainner-most dread to replace it with a random act of horror that NO ONE would want to do.

- Scarecrow

The Hellbound Web Hellraiser Forum - www.cenobite.com/forum/

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[–] ashfordcrane 14 years ago

ScarecrowX, I completely agree. The ending was just a series of letdowns from the point of the villain very quickly shucking off his lifelong fear to the last shot. The girl conquered her "beast," so she should have been released. But instead she's imprisoned and tortured more. This had no bearing on the rest of the story at all, and was completely contradictory to Quaid's character. To me, it went from a potentially well-done psychological horror movie to a frat house rental where the ending would elicit the following response:
Fratboy 1: "Aw, dude. She's gotta like eat that whole guy now."
Fratboy 2: "Yeah, dude. That's so messed up. High five!"

In the land of the blind, 1-eyed man's king. In the land of 1-eyed men, 2-eyed man is FREAKING OUT!

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[–] horrorshowmovie 13 years ago

agreed, the ending of the movie was just silly as hell

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[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Oddark123 11 years ago

The movie Quaid is far more psycho at that point then his book counterpart. He did face his dread when he killed the deaf kid who had slain his "friend" with an axe just like his parents.

He mentions in the narrative he likes living in other's dread vicariously. He made her eat the meat, this was facing her beast, now he makes her face something even more disturbing. Eating her lover.

Book Quaid was much more feeble in that when he is confronted with his dread he fails and i slain in a moment of irony. This Quaid however is not quite the same beast. One is more laidback and in all honesty more calculative, the movie one is more crazy.

It's pretty much to be expected now CB story adaptions are changed on purpose to give a different experience. I don't think this film told a better story than the original story, but i think it did a fine job telling a different story from it, and i liked this version of Quaid.

I refuse to argue on IMDB until the general populous actually uses their brains

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