Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #17: Possessor Uncut (2020) After watching this movie, I remarked that this felt like a long episode of Black Mirror (and not just because it stars Andrea Riseborough). I stand by that statement. Much like the last movie I reviewed, I really thought this was a fine movie, but it had some plot elements that I simply didn't understand, that really would have made the viewing experience a lot more satisfying. Maybe if I had watched it a second time I could have picked up on them? I don't know, but the movie itself wasn't so good that I was clambering for a re-watch. Possessor (the Bucket List specified the Uncut version, I don't know what's different between the two, though I have some ideas) takes place in a near-futuristic world where a shadowy organization has technology that can put an implant in your brain that lets one of them take control of your mind and make you do whate

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #16 - Relic (2020) Relic follows a mother and daughter that come together after the grandmother has gone missing. She turns back up, but then begins showing signs of mental instability and seems to be going through bizarre behavioral phases. There's this weird mold growing around the house, there's a weird shadow person/thing in the background of certain scenes, and the grandmother seems to have been keeping something sinister locked behind a closet door that defies time and space. Overall I had positive thoughts on this movie (and there was even one sequence that I REALLY loved) but much of the runtime it felt like a generic mishmash of other movies I've seen. The beginning where the mother and daughter come together to help search for the grandmother felt VERY reminiscent of the first twenty minutes of The Dark and The Wicked (which came out the same year), to the point where my wif

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #15 - In Fabric (2018) This is, without question, one of the most bizarre movies I've seen in a long, long time. Possibly ever. Top ten weirdest in my life, definitely. The entire movie I was constantly trying to latch onto a detail here, a clue there, hoping to piece together some sort of big puzzle that would make the entire narrative coherent. Unfortunately, it never happened, and I have no idea what I just watched. There's gonna be some spoilers in here, but I promise you, it won't affect your viewing of the movie because I don't even know if there's a plot here TO spoil. The (story?) of this movie starts off following Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Sheila, a lovelorn divorcee who is getting back into the dating game so she buys a dress from what can only be described as a lovecraftian sex cult posing as a department store. The dress is... cursed? Or haunted? And it REALLY does

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #14 - Cam (2018) I'll start this review off by saying that I think there's a lot of potential in a horror story about a cam girl, or any kind of person in the sex industry. And this movie plays with a lot of that potential- having a follower show up in your hometown to stalk you, having your family discover what you do for a living before you're ready to tell them, having your persona stolen and nobody seems to understand or care- heck, even just a movie where your cam girl account gets hacked and you have to deal with the least-helpful customer service representative in the world is a legitimately horrific premise for a story. But for all of the dangers lurking around the corner for someone in the sex industry, "having an AI (or possibly ghost?) do your job for you" seems kind of far down the list. The premise of this movie is as follows: Madeline Brewer plays Alice, a cam

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #13 - The Dark and the Wicked (2020) This is one of those movies that I never would have watched in a million years if it weren't recommended to me by this bucket list; the premise is fairly generic and there aren't any actors in it that I'm clambering to see. That being said, it was quite an experience, and I'm glad I watched it! The first thing I should probably get right out there is that this film is hard to watch. It's an incredibly slow burn (I feel like you could sum up most of the events of this entire story in three or four sentences), and it spends the entirety of its runtime steadily building up a mounting sense of impending dread. The entire time the film is playing, you know SOMETHING is coming. At various points, something DOES come, but you know that IT is still on its way. Where most films will break up the tension with some comic relief, or some lighthearted s

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #12 - Upgrade (2018) Hot dang! I knew basically nothing going into this movie, and now I'm SHOCKED that I haven't heard anyone raving about it for the past four years. Opinion spoilers: This is the best movie I've seen all year, and definitely the best one I've watched for this bucket list, hands-down. The only problem- I really don't feel right calling it a horror film. Yes, parts of it are horrific, but it's more of an action/revenge movie than a horror film, something akin to a sci-fi-focused John Wick rather than, say, Carrie. But that's not a bad thing! I encourage everyone to go watch this film if you haven't already, just don't go in expecting straight-up horror. The plot is fairly simple: Logan Marshall-Green plays Grey, a near-futuristic everyman whose wife is murdered and he is left quadriplegic. He's given a cybernetic implant that lets him regai

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #11 - The Love Witch (2016) It's been a while since I've written one of these, almost as if some other piece of popular media has been taking up 99% of my free time. (Something elden. And ring-like.) To tell the truth, I even watched this movie over a month ago, and haven't felt like writing about it until now (and I'm only really doing it now because I have another, much better movie to write about and I need to get this one out of the way). So, that probably gives away how much I did or didn't like this one. Simply put, this movie wasn't great. Aesthetically it's a delight- they spent a lot of time and effort making it look and feel like a movie from the 70s, and to that end, they did a bang-up job. It really did look and feel like a cinematic treat from yesteryear, back when movies didn't need to be particularly enjoyable, because Golly, there's color pictur

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #10 - Spontaneous (2020) So, the first thing I want to address about this film is that I both agree and disagree with it being on a list of horror movies. On the one hand, there is definitely an extremely horrific and terrifying element to the premise and plot of this film- there's no denying that. But on the other hand, this is absolutely a romance movie, not a horror movie. Even calling it romance/horror feels a bit much. But whatever the case (spoilers for my final thoughts) this is a great movie and I definitely never would have watched it if it hadn't been on this list! Spontaneous is a story about a group of teenagers in a small town who start spontaneously combusting. Without warning, without apparent cause, one by one they start randomly exploding. And that's kind of all that needs  to be said- everything else that happens in the film is an extrapolation of that concept. But t

This review was originally written in 2020, and reposted as part of the Bucket List Challenge in 2022. There may or may not be small differences between the two reviews. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #9 - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) I already watched and reviewed this movie for a previous October movie marathon, but I figured it was worth a revisit. I have mostly the same thoughts now as I did then but will add some more outside of the context of the whole series. It's easy to see why this movie started a franchise, and despite some flaws I think this movie absolutely still holds up today. The dialogue isn't great, much of the acting is pretty bad (Heather Langenkamp's in particular leaves a LOT to be desired), but the practical effects are top-notch, and the dream sequences in this movie are legit some of the most horrifying images ever put to film. (The body bag in the school hallway, the bladed glove in the bathtub- those sequences are just so mind-

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #8 - The Endless (2018) A disclaimer: Most of this review is going to be me complaining about the logistics and mechanics of this movie, and it's going to be full of spoilers. I'll try to summarize my non-mechanical thoughts as concisely as possible. The Endless is an interesting film created by writing/directing duo Benson and Moorhead. Apart from Spring (which to my knowledge doesn't fit into this film's universe, though I could be mistaken) this was the first Benson & Moorhead joint I'd seen, and I was instantly intrigued by the premise: two brothers escaped a cult ten years ago, and after hearing that the cult was seemingly getting ready to kill themselves, they go back for one last visit to get some closure. When they get there, they realize that the cult's supernatural beliefs seem to be true, and they get caught up in a strange web of timey-wimeyness under the u

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #7 - Midsommar (2019) First things first, I've seen Midsommar a few times before- it's my wife's favorite movie in fact, and it's often on in the background while we're doing things around the house- but this was the first time I've actually sat down and paid attention to it in quite a long time. Not only that, but we chose to watch the Director's Cut, which I'd never seen- and it adds a whopping ~30 minutes' worth of content, mostly in the forms of extended scenes that add a lot of context to the scenes that are already there! So, I'll put this right out there: I think this is a great film, though it's lacking something and I'm not sure what. It took until this latest viewing of the film to really feel a significant amount of dread or fear for the characters; my first time through I distinctly remember sitting through the whole movie and constantly

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #6 - The Mortuary Collection (2019) What can I say? I'm a sucker for horror anthologies, so when I saw this one on the list I knew I had to check it out. The framing device for this film (a girl applies for a job at a creepy-ass funeral home, where the undertaker tells her the stories of how the people died) is kind of... incredibly hokey, but it comes around in a really interesting way in the end that I really liked. Apparently this movie started as a short called "The Babysitter Murders", which they then built the framing device around (and added a couple more stories to round it out), but I wouldn't have guessed it had I not read it on IMDB, because I definitely feel like an equivalent amount of care was put into each of the segments. The movie isn't perfect, though. Each story was fairly predictable (I saw the frat boy storyline coming from a mile away) and the acting wa

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #5- Drag Me to Hell (2009) So far, all of the Bucket List movies I've watched have been ones I've seen before (that'll change soon, don't worry) and this movie is no exception. I saw this back when it came out, and my thoughts then are mostly the same as they are now: Drag Me to Hell is a solid, fun horror movie with some great scares, great acting, and phenomenal cinematography. I noticed a lot of details I never caught before, many of which are likely intentional metaphor- the main character has a subtle backstory that keeps being brought up against her will throughout the story, over and over, in ways that make her ordeal even more and more traumatic and personal than it felt at first. All of the characters' actions feel real and believable (if a bit on-the-nose, apart from the backstory I alluded to the dialogue and characterization in this film is about as subtle as a ham

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #4- The Lighthouse (2019) This was my second time watching this film, and I'll definitely say I appreciated it more this time than the first time. (I still have no freaking clue what was happening for most of it, and the ending still makes not a lick of sense to me, but I can at least see how deliberate it all was.) Like the director's previous film, The VVitch, this film is an incredibly slow burn and if you don't go in with the right mindset you're probably not going to have a great time. It's such a specific product- it's a movie inspired by a real-world event you probably haven't heard of, created using a specific type of film with a specific aspect ratio to create a very specific look, the actors were taught incredibly specific dialects for their lines (including instruction like "say the third sentence of your second line 75% faster") in order to create

This review was originally written in 2021. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #3- We Are Still Here (2015) I watched this movie a few years ago, and I even wrote a review for it (I remember arguing with a friend on Facebook about some of the issues I had). I ultimately didn't like it, but I don't remember much beyond that negative reaction, and I've heard so many people praise this film in the years since, so this time around I made sure to pay better attention and give it another shot. Unfortunately, I still don't like this movie. I feel like it didn't do anything noteworthy, the characters' motivations don't make sense, and the plot feels like a half-baked episode of Supernatural (except the several episodes of Supernatural that dealt with this exact same plot still had more going for them than this feature-length movie). The premise is nothing new, yet incredibly muddled: a family moves into a new house, but unknown to them there are ghosts

This review was originally written in 2021. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #2- The Cabin in the Woods (2011) It's going to be hard to write this review without just gushing for a thousand words. I think this movie is a masterpiece of writing, of execution, of everything- there isn't a thing I would change about this movie if given the opportunity, except the fact that it lost a lot of potential for more of a lasting legacy due to licensing issues. More on that later I guess. For anyone who hasn't seen this film, GO WATCH IT. Like, seriously. WATCH IT RIGHT NOW. Don't watch trailers (what little good they'd do anyway), don't hem and haw about it, go get a Peacock subscription or rent it on Amazon prime (as of this writing it's free if you do so). Or buy a copy. This movie is a non-stop rollercoaster of horror, of comedy, and just brilliant writing that I can't really overstate. It's no secret that this movie is a veiled satire of the h

This review was originally written in 2021. I remember seeing this movie back in 2013, when it first came out. I always think of The Conjuring as being at the forefront of a "new wave" or "new era" of horror films- but in retrospect it might just be because it spawned like six thousand sequels (plus or minus the Insidious series, which I find hard to extricate, what with Patrick Wilson being in the lead). This movie definitely does something interesting by having it revolve around what is (ostensibly) a real case with real people, but this does serve to undercut some of the tension when the lead characters are seemingly put in danger. (Like, Ed and Lorraine Warren are real people, who did real things. I know neither of them got killed by a ghost, especially not in the 1970s.) But this movie ticks a lot of boxes for me. I love me a good haunted house, I love when something that's so nebulous and unproven as a haunting is spoken about like it has rules and structu

Hello once again, everyone! The next batch of movies is going to break from format a bit. So far, all of my movie reviews had been written in October of their respective year, as part of a 31-Movies-In-October ritual that started way back in 2016. In November 2021, however, for my birthday, a good friend gave me a poster of 100 Top Horror Movies  where each movie is a little scratch-off box revealing some artwork for that movie. Seeing this as a fun challenge, I decided that over the coming year, I would watch and review every movie on the list, ending with the final 31 movies across the 31 days of October 2022! This was a huge undertaking, of course (I've already talked in past blog posts about the sheer amount of time 31 movies take to watch and review, and although this isn't confined to one month, it's still 100 freaking movies) but my weekly podcast was about to end and I decided I should put that incoming free time to good use. It's worth noting that I'd alrea

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #31- Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)! Well, it's the end of the month, the spookiest of days, and here we are! I've seen a lot of zombie cinema this month and I'm glad I did. I saw a lot of movies I'd never seen and probably wouldn't have otherwise. But more on that later. Zombieland: Double Tap wasn't bad , exactly, but it fell victim to a lot of the pitfalls that tend to happen when a sequel is made many years after-the-fact: rather than just trying to make a good film in its own right, the filmmakers end up writing a love letter to the previous film and/or the fandom that's arisen around it. This movie's focus on listing a bunch of rules (something I liked in the previous film) is an example of this. It didn't feel organic, it just felt like they were saying, "Remember this thing you liked? We've tried to replicate it!" And of course this extends also

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #30- Zombieland (2009) First things first: After watching this movie I spent the rest of the day craving twinkies. I think we know why. This was definitely a fun movie. I saw it back when it came out, and I can say I appreciated it more this time around, but I also think parts of it don't quite hold up. Apparently this script started as a TV pilot, that got re-worked into a feature film- with the "Zombie Kill of the Week" being a remnant of this original idea. I think it would have been really interesting as a TV show, but I'm sure it would have been so different that it's hard to say whether it would have been as good or not. While on the topic of the "Zombie Kill of the Week", I think that's one thing that doesn't really fit the movie as we see it. Two of the mentioned ZKotWs involve other characters not part of the main group, so like, who are those people and

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #29- Night of the Comet (1984) This was... a strange movie. Despite being referred to by many as a zombie flick (I found it on multiple lists of "10 best zombie movies") the zombie presence is so slight, it might as well be completely absent. The main characters only encounter one full-on zombie in the entire movie, two zombies in a dream, a group of looters led by a partial zombie (were they all zombies? I don't know, more on that later), and I think one of the army guys was supposed to be partially a zombie at the end, but I'm not sure. I just don't really get what purpose the zombification was supposed to serve- I guess it served as an impetus for the science/army people to try and find a cure, but couldn't you have cut the zombification from the film entirely and just had it be a slow, creeping death that they're trying to find a cure for? That would have been way scar

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #28- Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006) It's going to be hard to talk about this movie without comparing it to Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker, because it's very clear that the creator of Mulva was trying so desperately to make a movie like this. I'll actually double back and change what I said about Mulva: it wasn't "intentionally bad" like I said it was, because I don't think it was trying to be "bad". It was just trying to be a particular thing, and that particular thing was also very, very bad. Because in a similar way, Poultrygeist was trying to be a particular thing, and although it is also very bad, I think it succeeded far and above more than Mulva did, at being what it wanted to be. Poultrygeist is a disgusting movie. No other way to put it. It's crass, it's graphic, it's vulgar, it's racist- it's offensive in a dozen different w