Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #18- Hellraiser: Deader Hmm. This one was... I don't really know. It started off great, very much like the last two, and I was intrigued and interested for about 60% of the film. But then the movie got really confusing, and unlike Hellseeker (which was also very confusing at times), this time around the confusion didn't go away and so the ending just kind of felt like a mess. So this movie follows a journalist, Amy, who gets a tip about this weird death cult (called "Deaders", hence the goofy title) that supposedly gets its members to show their dedication by committing suicide, at which point their enigmatic leader (a man named "Winter") is somehow able to bring them back from the dead. Amy goes to investigate, finds the puzzle box, and starts having weird visions/experiences where she thinks she's... already dead? Or undead? Or immortal? Or cursed? See, this is what's really c

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #17- Hellraiser: Hellseeker Are you kidding me? Two in a row? I'm beginning to think I was misled in regards to what to expect from this series, because like the previous entry, I thought this one was GREAT. I might even like this one better than the last one- I'm not sure. I feel like this one is not quite deserving of a perfect score- but I can't really put my finger on anything I disliked about it. Similar to Inferno, I love how this one is all about one man's inner demons, rather than literal demons that blow things up as you run away from them. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it, but I loved how this is a direct continuation of Kirsty's story from movies 1 & 2. Numerous times throughout this film I had moments where I would roll my eyes and say, "Oh, I know what's going on. This is pretty predictable." But then, even though I got small parts of it right,

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #16- Hellraiser: Inferno Holy cow, what is this movie doing here? In this series? It's actually GOOD. Like, REALLY good. To the point where I think I like it better than I liked the original and I would feel perfectly fine recommending this to anyone, even if they have no intention of watching any other Hellraiser movies. Like, I don't even know where to begin saying what it was I liked about this. I liked almost all of it. On one hand I want to praise this film for actually making the cenobites interesting AND scary, but I also want to point out that this movie used far less of them than any other in the series. There's so little distinct cenobite presence in this film that I almost feel like it was a separate movie that got shoehorned into the Hellraiser series at the last minute (hence why I'd recommend this to someone who hasn't seen any others). [End-of-Writing Edit: I just looked at the I

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #15- Hellraiser: Bloodline I'll say right out: This movie gave me a lot of hope for this series. Even if it wasn't great (still living in the pale shadow of #1) it was a marked improvement in tone and quality over #2 and #3. Similar to the last one this movie really had me interested for like the first half, then it kind of became a wet stain for the second half, with a neat ending that almost made up for the previous 45 minutes. I will admit, I was ready to write this film off entirely when the first scene starts and I saw that it took place in the future, on a space station. I know that a few franchises did space-themed movies around this time- Jason X was a few years after this, and Leprechaun 4 was around here too- so it didn't really surprise me. (The REALLY bad CGI thirty seconds in didn't do it any favors either.) But then, the movie got into the plot pretty quickly, and to be perfectly hone

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #14- Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth What can I say about this movie? It was... better than the previous one, in fact there were some parts of it that I really liked. But then, the rest of it was just... so, so bad. I honestly have no clue what direction this series is going in because each entry is nothing like the one before it, and neither of the two sequels I've watched so far seem to understand what was good about the first one. I was hoping that maybe #2 was going to be that weird fluke entry that shows up in a horror franchise (like Nightmare on Elm Street part 2, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, etc.) but while this movie was totally different than its predecessor, it still made a lot of the same mistakes. In the first movie, the cenobites were TERRIFYING. They did so little, but what they did was mysterious and oppressive and you didn't even know if they were on the same time scale as humanity. The

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #13- Hellbound: Hellraiser II I went into this movie with very high hopes, as the first entry felt incredibly different than anything I'd seen before and left tons of unanswered questions that seemed like they would have interesting answers. In the most superficial sense this movie ticked a lot of the same boxes, but ultimately left me confused more than intrigued, and I honestly can't tell if the unanswered questions are what they are because the director wanted to keep us wanting more, or if there just wasn't a clear vision of what this movie wanted to be. This film has so much going on early in the story- Dr. Channard's got an entire plot involving the cenobites and resurrects Julia for some reason (which happens very easily and conveniently I guess), then their plan is to summon the cenobites because Julia wants to sacrifice the doctor to... a big crystal thing? Then the big crystal thing kills

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #12- Hellraiser This is the only one of the Hellraiser movies I've seen before; I saw it a few years ago but never followed up. I always assumed this was a long-running old-school horror franchise (like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Child's Play, etc.) but now that I'm actually getting into it I see that I was quite mistaken. The vast majority of the movies in this series have been within the last 20 years, with the most recent being in 2018 (!), so I guess what I'm getting at is that I have no idea what to expect in the entries to come. This film was incredibly enjoyable, if incredibly bizarre. Compared to your typical slashers (where some big killer guy just goes around killing unwary teens), this one follows no formula I've ever seen. The story explores the question of, what if there were a dimension of pain and pleasure so intense that it was worth having your body and soul torn apart

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #11- Halloween (2018) Alright, here we are- the final of the Halloween movies (for now, anyway). I saw this one in theater when it came out, and my thoughts on it are the same now as when I saw it then. I thought I might have more (or less) of an appreciation for it after having seen everything that led up to it, but I'd say it's about the same. First things first: I think this is an excellent movie. It's very important that I get that right out here, because I am about to complain a LOT about this film and I need you to understand that ultimately this movie is still great and 100% worth watching no matter what else I say about it. The action is incredible, the characters are all believable and likable, the cinematography is great and everything that happens feels like it has the appropriate weight. I kind of wish this was intentionally made to be the end of the series because it would be such a good e

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #10- Halloween II (the Rob Zombie sequel) One disclaimer: Apparently I was watching the Director's Cut, which made a lot of changes (including having a completely different ending). I have never seen the non-Director's Cut version, so I can't comment on it (though I can't imagine it being different enough to change my thoughts on the film as a whole). I really don't have a lot of positive things to say about this one. It's a sequel to the last one, which was nothing special, and this time it's going off on its own direction and doing its own thing. In theory that could have made it great- nothing wrong with spicing up a series by taking it in a new direction, as long as it's done well- but the end result is a disjointed mess that seems pointless and doesn't even feel like a Halloween movie. One complaint that was also present in the last movie: All of the characters are awful. E

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #9- Halloween (the Rob Zombie one) I have very mixed feelings about this movie. On one hand, it's not BAD. It's a pretty stock-standard modern reboot of the original. But it's not GOOD. It tells the same story (with a couple noteworthy changes), which is good, but if fluffs it up with all sorts of filler that I really don't think makes it better, which is bad. So spoilers for my review, but I think I give this one like a 5/10. One of the big changes is that this movie is much more about Michael Myers than it is about Laurie Strode- or, at least, the first half of the movie is. I kid you not when I tell you it takes 40 minutes to get to modern day, and nearly an hour- 54 minutes I think- before Laurie is introduced as a teenager. 54 minutes! And the reason is because they really want to build up who Michael is, where he came from, how he became who he is. Except... I seriously have no clue what I

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #8- Halloween: Resurrection Oh no. Oh, NO. This movie... was bad. Like, VERY bad. I would love to start off with the good parts of my review so then I can get to the bad, but... I really don't know what good there is. The first ten minutes was.... good-ish, but it had basically nothing to do with the rest of the film and I'm sure was only there to explain away the ending of the previous film while still keeping Jamie Lee Curtis on the movie poster (since I'm sorry, but Busta Rhymes just doesn't have the star power to put butts in seats for this one). The rest of the movie was just bad, bad, bad. I was trying to explain to a co-worker what exactly it is about this movie that makes it look so specific to the four-or-five-year period in which it came out (1998-2003), but every big-studio movie that came out during that period has the same look and feel to it. This one is no exception. It's got so

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #7- Halloween H20: 20 Years Later I was (a little bit) excited to watch this movie, because I remember when it came out! It was a big deal, for reasons I didn't quite understand at the time (as I hadn't seen any of the others)- because Jamie Lee Curtis was returning to the franchise, after starring in the first film and having a (lackluster) role in the second. As a kid I had gotten the impression there was a huge gap between this movie and the previous one, but in retrospect it was only three years (which is actually below average for this series). Overall I actually really liked this one (relatively speaking, anyway)- it has some issues (which I'll get to) but it was pretty fast-paced, I cared about the characters even though most of them got fairly little screen time, and it felt like the people involved had a good time making it. After watching this one, I feel like this is the best example of what

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #6- Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers There is so much about this movie that confused me. Rather than fill our head with needless details like "who are these characters" and "why should I care about them" and "what happened to the protagonist from the last film" this movie just throws a whole bunch of new characters at us in the same locations and same plotlines. Michael Myers is still going back to Haddonfield, for... some reason. Because that's what he does I guess. Haddonfield is still woefully unprepared for the regularly scheduled serial killer that only ever attacks there for... some reason. (In fact, between this film and the last, they both banned Halloween altogether, and then un-banned it. As if we should care.) All of the action is taking place in the Myers house and the Smith's Grove sanitarium, for... some reason. (Actually, I know the reason- because the writ

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #5- Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers Full disclosure: Most of the movies I'll be watching this month (including the four I've reviewed so far) I'll be watching while I'm at work, and so I can't necessarily give 100% of my attention. I pay more attention than you might expect, but there's always the chance I might miss some details here and there. I mention this because although I watched it at home (and thus paid more attention than usual), today's movie in particular had some VERY confusing moments, which led to me having to go back and re-watch certain parts because I was sure I missed something. In some cases, I did- in others, I didn't, and it was just the result of poor writing. For example, my first time through I somehow completely missed the title card that showed that this movie was taking place a year after the previous one- which left me VERY confused, as the cha

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #4: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers Oh no. Well, we can see right from the title what they were trying to do- get the series back on track with what they thought people wanted. Were they successful? I don't know, but considering how there's still like six more entries (not including the two that are currently being made) I'd say so. First things first: This movie was bad. It wasn't boring (the cardinal sin of movies), but hoo boy it was bad. It looked nice and it had lots of late-80s polish and the actors did a good job but at its core this movie is a real stinker. I started off the movie more confused than anything else- I was under the impression Laurie Strode was the protagonist for at least the majority of these films, yet this one starts off with her having died several years previous? WTF happened, both with this movie and with the following ones? At what point does she come back, an

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #3: Halloween III: Season of the Witch I thought I had watched this movie before; I distinctly remember putting it on some time in the last couple years while playing a game on my Switch. I must not have paid any attention, though, because I remembered literally nothing after the first five minutes. Guys... this movie wasn't terrible. I mean, it was- hang on, put your pitchforks away, let me finish- it had a lot of things wrong with it. But I can't deny that it had the bones of a good story in there. An evil corporation steals an ancient druidic standing stone, grinds it up, and uses it to process a bunch of Halloween masks as part of a pagan ritual to sacrifice children to the god of the harvest. That alone is actually kind of an awesome premise! There are two huuuuuge problems with the execution though: They used that premise in the wrong freaking franchise, and the movie takes a looooooooong time to get

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #2: Halloween II I spent about forty minutes writing a review for this movie and then something happened and the page refreshed, and I lost it all. I don't plan on doing that again so I'll try to just hit the highlights. Overall I liked this film. Not as much as the first one, but the action was good, it had a much better pace this time around, and although not all of the things it did were good, it felt like a suitable end for Michael Myers (as it seems it was intended to be at the time). It has a lot of issues, though. It still does a lot of "telling", reminding us again and again about how Myers is apparently "pure evil", something they seem to be sticking to a lot. They certainly "show" us more than they did before (mainly by virtue of not having to spend 2/3 of the run time expecting the audience to not know who or what Michael Myers is, and by having a higher body count)

This review was originally written in October 2020. October Movie Review #1: Halloween (1976) Alright, I'm starting October 2020 off with a classic: Halloween, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance! I've seen this movie once before, a few years ago. I don't think I paid a lot of attention to it because there were a lot of parts I didn't remember (though I've seen the remake so it felt like I did at times). I'll start off with the good: This movie is a solid horror film and certainly is worthy of having been such a foundational progenitor of the slasher subgenre. The characters are likable enough, the setting is as believable as it gets, and this entry is lacking so many of the annoying tropes that pop up in virtually every modern horror film. Although I don't remember having a particularly positive impression of Halloween from the last time I watched it, this time around I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am definitely looking forward to seeing where the