Gabe Reviews Horror

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #12 - Santa's Slay (2005) Watch it here on YouTube! [This video starts off with an ad for the uploader's Gofundme; it was the only free version I could find online, though this movie is also streamable with a subscription on multiple premium platforms.] Here we are, Merry Christmas everyone! It's been a roller coaster of a year, but we made it. I hope you're all safe and happy and comfortable, wherever you are. To celebrate the occasion, I bring to you a review of my all-time favorite Christmas Horror movie, and I hope you come out thinking of it the same way. Santa's Slay follows a teenager named Nicolas Yuleson who lives with his kooky inventor grandpa. His grandfather has never liked Christmas, and we find out why- he knows that Christmas wasn't always a time for joy. Until a thousand years ago, Santa Claus wasn't the jolly gift-giver we think of him as- he was the literal son of Satan, and spent one day every year spreading...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #11 - Await Further Instructions (2018) Watch it here on Tubi! Await Further Instructions follows a dysfunctional family (no surprise there) who get together for Christmas, only to wake up in the morning and find all of the doors and windows barred and blocked, sealing them all inside. Soon after this discovery, a presumably governmental broadcast comes over the television telling them to stay calm and await further instructions. But the instructions become more and more questionable, and the family's paranoia causes more and more conflict- is this a terrorist attack? Does the government have their best interests at heart? Or... are these instructions even from the government at all? This movie ticks a lot of boxes for me- I love stories where the characters are trapped in one central location, and I like when the interpersonal issues between characters are the star of the show. But most importantly, I love when there's a seemingly normal situation...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #10 - Black Christmas (2006) Watch it here on Tubi! I'll get the synopsis out of the way: the 2006 Black Christmas remake follows a group of sorority girls who get killed off one-by-one in contrived and inexplicably unnoticed ways by an unseen serial killer on Christmas Eve. There's a couple small subplots going on but that's pretty much it. This movie is, in a word, terrible. It does two things very, very wrong: it took a story about a mysterious killer with unknown motivations and a clever whodunit twist, and gave the killer a complicated and winding backstory about a boy who was born with a liver disease that turned his skin yellow and then his mother hated his father for some reason so she killed the father and locked the boy in the attic but then one day the mother had sex with her son and she got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter so she loved the son but then the son broke out of the attic and killed his mother and ripped out his daug...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #9 - Black Christmas (1974) Watch it here on Tubi! Considered by many to be one of the first slasher films (and definitely the first slasher revolving around a holiday), Black Christmas follows a group of sorority girls at the start of Christmas break. First they start getting a series of disturbing phone calls, and then the girls start disappearing one by one. When it's finally confirmed that some sort of foul play is afoot, the police think they've figured out who the culprit is- but the calls might be coming from inside the house. I'd never seen this film before, though I had seen the 2006 remake (which I'll be reviewing tomorrow). Right off the bat it's pretty easy to see why this is considered one of the classics- the plot is good and moves at a nice clip, the characters are engaging and fleshed-out enough (and not too much, which is important), and there's just the right amount of tension and suspense. It's mind-boggling c...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #8 - Terrifier 3 (2024) [This movie is fairly new and as such doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere for free, but you can purchase it on Amazon Prime Video, Fandango at Home, and Apple TV.] The first thing I want to say is that it's a rare move to have one entry in a film series be holiday-themed; I'm sure it's happened before but this is the only instance I can think of, especially for a horror series. So this one has the novelty of that going for it. I'm not going to try and summarize the plot very accurately; I'll just say that this movie takes place five years after Terrifier 2 (I reviewed 1 & 2 last year, so go back and read those if you want a recap) and it follows Sierra, the survivor of that film, as she and her remaining family are beset upon once again by Art the supernatural murderer clown. There's some Christmas-based hijinks in here but the majority of the action could be set whenever or wherever. I'll be ...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #7 - It's A Wonderful Knife (2023) [This movie doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere for free; it's on most platforms with a subscription, so if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, Hulu, Roku, Philo, Disney+, or AMC+, it should be included in your subscription.] This movie came recommended from a source I respect very much; the concept drew me in instantly. However, as it went on I had some serious issues I'll need to address, and that means I'm going to need to spoil some (but not all) of the plot in the process. This is a relatively new film so fair warning, vague spoilers ahead. It's A Wonderful Knife follows the story of Winnie, a girl in a small town that gets beset upon by a serial killer on Christmas Eve. Winnie manages to kill the masked murderer, and a year later is still troubled by the loss of the people he killed. In a moment of anguish at how people treat her, she wishes she were never born- and she gets her wish, suddenly...