Gabe Reviews Horror

October 2024 Horror Reviews #18 - Friday the 13th (1980) Watch it here on PlutoTV! Friday the 13th began life as a cheap knockoff of Halloween, which released two years previous. But over the years, as it grew and gained popularity, it truly became a tent pole for the entire genre- I honestly wonder what the horror landscape would look like if it weren't for this series. I'm not sure why I went this long without reviewing them (except for Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X, which I reviewed many years ago for some reason), but here we are! I first saw Friday the 13th in 2005 or 2006, after my wife and I started up a weekly horror movie night with our friends. I wanted to start off on a good note (and see a movie I had never really been exposed to growing up), so this was the first one we watched at our first gathering. It follows a group of teenagers who have been hired to help fix up and run a summer camp that's been out of commission for many years (after some suspicious deat...

October 2026 Horror Reviews #17 - Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021) Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is a direct-to-streaming entry in the series, that was made six years after The Ghost Dimension. It follows a girl named Margot who was abandoned by her mother as a baby, after she discovers her closest living relatives are members of an Amish community. With camera help from her friend Chris and an audio engineer they met online, they start making a documentary about the community her mother came from- but they quickly learn that this community has dark secrets, and connections to the occult. The first thing I should mention about this movie: as far as I can tell, it has no in-universe connection to the rest of the series. (I was looking pretty hard for any sort of easter egg that mentions any of the lore from other Paranormal Activity movies, and found nothing.) Not only that, but this movie seems to be found footage pretty much in name only- a lot of the movie is filmed with a ...

October 2026 Horror Reviews #16 - Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015) Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension follows a new family living in an absurdly massive house, who discover a box of junk in their garage that contains a bunch of VHS tapes as well as an old video camera. The tapes turn out to have belonged to Katie and Kristi's family from Paranormal Activity 3 (including the tape that ostensibly contained that entire movie on it), and the house they are living in turns out to have been built on the land where Katie & Kristi lived when they were kids (before their house burned down after the events of that movie). The old video camera seems to be able to pick up ghosts and paranormal phenomena on film, which is convenient because the ghost/demon/whatever Toby shows up to befriend and eventually kidnap the family's daughter, Leila. Yadda yadda yadda, more of the same. Needless to say, I did not care for this movie. Like, at all. The quality of the writing ...

October 2026 Horror Reviews #15 - Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014) Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is the fifth entry in the Paranormal Activity series, but at first glance appears to be a spin-off rather than a direct follow-up to the others (though as the movie goes on, the connections become quite frequent and direct). It follows a group of Mexican-American teenagers- Jesse, Hector, and Marisol- who start spying on a woman in their apartment complex after hearing she might be some kind of witch. After this woman gets murdered by another teen in the community, they sneak into her home and find a collection of occult materials- and Jesse starts exhibiting strange powers and violent tendencies. Will the three of them be able to find the cause of these strange happenings before Jesse is overtaken by this strange occultic force? I remember watching the first half of this movie back when it came out, but lost interest and never finished it until just now. Having had such a...

October 2026 Horror Reviews #14 - Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) (I should say, I have just now realized I watched the Unrated version of this movie, which apparently adds ten whole minutes  to its runtime. I am unclear on what exactly was added, so apologies for not differentiating.) This is the last of the Paranormal Activity films I remember watching (in full, at least), having seen it back when it came out in 2012. I remembered very little about it compared to the others (and in fact some of the details I thought I remembered, ended up being wrong) so this one was largely new to me. And, not to spoil the review, but: I actually really liked this one! Still had some issues (a lot of the same issues, really) but I'll go over that in a bit. Paranormal Activity 4 is the first actual sequel to the first film, taking place four years after the events of Paranormal Activity 1. This entry follows a seemingly unrelated family (hereafter referred to as Dad, Mom, the young brother Wyatt, ol...

October 2026 Horror Reviews #13 - Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) We're back with another Paranormal Activity movie, once again acting as a prequel to both of the previous films. (Don't worry, the next entry- Paranormal Activity 4- is the first actual sequel. Aren't you excited?) This was probably the entry I remembered the most from seeing it back when it released, though that may not be saying much. Paranormal Activity 3 starts off with a framing device of Katie and Kristi, prior to the events of the previous film, finding some old family home videos, and... I guess this is supposed to be what they see (but that doesn't really make any sense if you think about it; more on that later). In this home video from 1988, we see the two of them as children, as well as their parents, Dennis and Julie (the IMDB plot summary says Dennis is not their father, rather he is Julie's live-in boyfriend, but if that was ever said in the movie I didn't catch it, and regardless, it...