Movie Review
Broken Lizard's Club Dread
Club Dread poster
By Gareth Von Kallenbach     Published February 29, 2004
US Release: February 27, 2004

Directed by: Jay Chandrasekhar
Starring: Julio Bekhor , Jay Chandrasekhar , Greg Cipes , Ann Daniel

R
Running Time: 105 minutes
Domestic Box Office: $4,992,000
D
Absolutely dreadful and should be avoided at all costs.
Broken Lizard, the twisted minds behind ?Super Troopers,? is back with a brand new film, ?Club Dread.? The story centers around a group of tourists who travel to a tropical resort that is owned by a singer, Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton), who uses the resort as a way to stay in the spotlight since his music has become largely nostalgic.

Before long, the good times are interrupted: bodies of staff members start to pile up, along with instructions not to alert the guests, and staff members failing to follow the instructions are promised to end up dead by the mysterious killer. With all forms of communication and escape removed by the killer, the staff must wait around until the next boat of guests arrives to evacuate them. The main problem is that the killer is still out there and is likely one of the staff members themselves.

Sadly, the jokes fall flat and I quickly lost all interest in the film. The ?Scary Movie? series did a far-superior job of spoofing horror by taking things to bizarre and outrageous lengths in order to get a laugh. ?Dread? tries to play it out as a traditional horror film with laughs, and fails badly; copious amounts of blood and gore are shown but they do not generate laughs at all, as that clearly seems to be the intent.

The Broken Lizard group is very restrained, as they never get any momentum behind their performances, leaving the film a disjointed effort. I wanted to like this film but there was so little to like, and so I decided to restrain my review and simply state that it is absolutely dreadful and should be avoided at all costs.
Gareth's Grade: D
Gareth's Overall Grading: 50 graded movies
A6.0%
B44.0%
C40.0%
D10.0%
F0.0%
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