Gabe Reviews Horror

Well, 2024 has come to an end. I started this blog about a year ago as a favor to my wife, and I'm really glad I did! It's been a lot of fun to go back and re-read all of these reviews I wrote in previous years, and although I haven't gotten a ton of traffic it's been nice to be able to show them to people and hear some feedback. Moving forward, unfortunately I won't be able to keep putting out this many reviews every year. (Remember, most of my uploads were written over the past seven or eight years, ain't nobody got time for that.) So at the moment, the next definite updates you can expect are 31 more movies in October 2025. I will probably pop in once in a while with a review of a movie or two I watched in the meantime, but I can't promise anything specific in advance. If you have any suggestions for movies to watch in the future, please let me know! Either reply to this post or email me at Gekleinert@gmail.com. It would definitely be easy to fill in some...

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...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #6 - Gremlins (1984) [This movie doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere for free; it's on most platforms with a subscription, and there's a few playlists on YouTube that look  like the full movie spread out over 30+ short videos, but I'm not about to test any of them to find out. If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, Hulu, Roku, Philo, or Max, it should be included in your subscription.] It's been a LONG time since I've seen this movie- maybe thirty years? Maybe longer. Gremlins is one of the films responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating (along with Poltergeist and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and I think the lack of a PG-13 rating at the time is a huge factor in why this movie so tightly straddles the line between horror and comedy. Does it succeed at both? I guess I'll get to that. Gremlins is a story about a teen named Billy whose eccentric father buys him a mysterious pet for Christmas- a mogwai named Gizmo. M...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #5 - Jack Frost (1997) Watch it here on Tubi! Just a quick clarification for the record: I am NOT reviewing the 1998 movie titled Jack Frost, starring Michael Keaton as a man named Jack Frost who dies and happens to be resurrected as a snowman to reunite with his son. I am reviewing the 1997 movie titled Jack Frost, about a serial killer named Jack Frost who is set to be executed in a town called Snowmonton and who happens to get caught in a chemical spill that resurrects him as a snowman to get revenge. Don't worry, that's an easy mistake to make (in fact I downloaded the wrong movie twice while trying to get my hands on a copy to review). I've already pretty much given away the whole plot: a serial killer gets ironically turned into a snowman and decides to take revenge on the sheriff that apprehended him (kinda sorta). I'll start off with some good things about this movie: I think it's genuinely hilarious at times, it has some moment...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #4 - Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) Watch it here on Tubi!   I'm going to be perfectly honest: the entire reason I watched this movie (and, by extension, the first one) was because I wanted to get some context for the infamous "Garbage Day!" scene that's been circulating on the internet for years and years. After having watched the entire movie I can cut to the chase and say: that scene isn't any less random in-context (in fact the rest of that scene is even MORE random, in the best and worst ways) and as great as that terrible scene might be, it's not worth watching this entire movie to get it. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 is barely even a movie, and I have a strong suspicion that it went through some extensive rewrites and reshoots and reimaginings before we got what we got. It (ostensibly) follows Ricky, the young brother from the first movie, who is grown up and has been arrested and is being interviewed by a p...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #3 - Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) Watch it here on YouTube! This certainly was... a movie. I've never seen this one before (there's a ton of these movies, including seemingly two different movies claiming to be Silent Night Deadly Night 6) so I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect THAT. I guess let me give a synopsis. A little kid named Billy goes with his parents on Christmas Eve on a day-long drive to deal with some paperwork at his grandfather's nursing home, and grandpa ominously warns Billy that Santa will punish him if he ever does anything naughty. Later that night, a serial killer dressed as Santa kills his father, and sexually assaults & kills his mother but leaves Billy and his infant brother alive. The boys are sent to an orphanage where Billy spends the following few years being abused by nuns, punished for witnessing a couple having sex, and forced to take part in Christmas celebrations...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #2 - Krampus (2015) [While this movie is not streaming for free anywhere, it should be available on many streaming services, including- as of this writing- Peacock, Max, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video.] The mid 2010s was in LOVE with Krampus, it seemed. We had Krampus movies, Krampus memes, Krampus Halloween costumes- despite existing in European folklore for centuries, it was like everyone collectively discovered this brand-new way to celebrate the winter season (and profit off of its merchandise, of course). And so, we ended up with a glut of Krampus-themed Christmas horror films, the most famous and star-studded of which being this movie from 2015, starring Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, and more. In this film, Krampus functions kind of like an "Anti-Claus", arriving in the protagonists' neighborhood to punish everybody after Max, the main character, begins to lose his faith in Santa Claus as a result of being bullied by his frie...

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #1 - Dead End (2003) Watch it here on Tubi! Well, we're back! And this time it's with a horror film I've seen many times. Dead End is a story about a dysfunctional family driving down a secluded road at night on their way to a Christmas party, when things start to get... creepy. The road goes on forever without any turns or crossroads, they keep passing the same landmarks, the only other car they ever see is an ominous black car that shows up when something tragic happens. There's a bit more to it than that, but the movie takes some twists and turns (unlike the road, amirite) that I really think are best experienced while watching it for the first time. I don't think this is a perfect movie, so I'll get the negatives out of the way right now: the writing in here is pretty ham-fisted and as unsubtle as can be. The characters all hate each other, and are clearly all one unfortunate event away from blurting out long-kept secrets. The s...

Happy December, everyone! After taking a nice month-long break from reviews, I'm eager to knock out a few more before the year is up. I had a couple people recommend that I try reviewing other types of movies (comedies, action movies); in particular, a friend suggested I review 31 Christmas movies in December. I don't plan on doing that, for a few different reasons (not the least of which being how difficult it is to do 31 movies in a month), but I decided to put a twist on it: I'm going to be reviewing twelve Christmas-themed horror movies, for the Twelve Slays of Christmas! (When I first decided to do this I thought, "Are there even twelve Christmas-themed horror movies?" And the answer is of course, yes. There's way more than that. I found a list of 47 and several of them I wanted to watch weren't even on there.) I might make changes to the order, but below is the list of movies I plan to review, starting on Saturday, December 14th and going until Chris...