The Popkorn Junkie :: Club Dread

      The twisted minds behind “Super Troopers”, Broken Lizard, are back with a brand new film “Club Dread”. The story such as it is, centers around a group of tourists who travel to a tropical resort that is owned by a Tropical 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 as the bodies of staff members start to pile up along with instructions not to alert the guests and to go about life as usual. 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 resort to waiting until the next boat of guests arrives to evacuate them. The main problem with this plan is that the killer is still out there and is likely one of the staff members themselves. Sadly this film loses all interest beyond the premise as 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. What “Dread” does is try to play it out as a traditional horror film with laughs and it 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 seem very restrained in their parts and never seem to get any momentum behind their performances leaving the film a disjointed effort. I had wanted to like this film but there was so little to like in it that I decided to restrain my review and simple state that this film is absolutely dreadful and should be avoided at all costs.

-- Gareth ( 1/2 out of 4 pops )

Talk about this film with other Popkorn Junkies

Other Junkie's opinions.....

Matt ( 2 out of 4 pops )

Even though I didn't think of "Super Troopers" as a magnificent film, I expected good things out of "Club Dread." As I mentioned in my review for "ST," even though the laughs were few and far between, the laughs that I did get were some of the biggest laughs I've gotten in the history of watching movies. And I respect the Broken Lizard team, because like the Farrelly Brothers they have a very original brand of humor--which is a relief because so many comedies nowadays seem to recycle the same gags over and over again. Unfortunately, I only got one or two big laughs out of this film--one of which involves a man in a pretzel costume having sex with a woman in a watermelon costume. The rest were mostly chuckles. The nudity factor is high, which is good for the guys in the audience, and Brittany Daniel is one major hottie! And I liked Bill Paxton as Coconut Pete, a has-been musician. Paxton has great talent as a comic actor, and it's too bad that talent isn't put to good use in more comedies. Despite the fact that I wasn't too pleased with the film, I do look forward to the next Broken Lizard feature. I still have faith in the Lizard team, and hopefully they'll soon make a comedy that's consistently funny.

Billy Ray ( 3 1/2 out of 4 pops )

The guys at Broken Lizard just know how to push all of my buttons when it comes to humor. "Super Troopers" was hilarious, and "Club Dread" is even better; and it is all because of the little touches. I liked how, in the beginning, the camera would switch to slow motion on certain people to insert the possibility that they were the killer. I also liked how Bill Paxton had such maniacal fun with his character and claimed credit for "Margaritaville", which he says was taken from his song "Pina Coladaburg". The film moves along at a quick, yet appropriate pace, and I found the ending to be just as irreverent and hilarious as the rest of the film. This was one of the funniest films I have seen in 2004, and I disagree with those people who say it is more horror than comedy. How can anyone be scared of a killer in a fruit costume in the middle of a Pac Man game? Not possible.