Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 28: Holidays This move is an anthology of like eight or nine short films, each based around a particular holiday (starting with Valentine's Day and going to New Year's Eve). I was pleasantly surprised by this- all of the films are pretty fun and none of them take themselves too seriously. Some have some incredibly unique takes on existing holiday concepts (like Easter featuring a rabbit-faced Jesus stealing a little girl in the middle of the night) and others use the holiday simply as a backdrop (such as New Year's being about the story of two serial killers going on a blind date on December 31st). Both kinds of takes are fun and done relatively well. I don't really have much negative to say about it except that some of the stories were just incredibly bizarre and/or having minor pacing or cinematography issues; but nothing that's so major it's worth getting upset over. I will say, thou...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 26: The Abandoned As with a lot of these movies, I noticed this on Netflix and it sounded interesting. Last night, after watching the first half an hour and kind of hating it, I put it down and came back to it tonight, to give it another chance. This movie is about a woman (named Streak... seriously people, why are all of these protagonists given such terrible names?) who takes a job as a night security guard in a gigantic abandoned apartment building. (I say "abandoned", but a building with a full suite of active surveillance cameras and two full-time security guards isn't what I would call abandoned.) An abandoned apartment building sounds like a rad setting for a horror movie, right? I'm picturing characters going into apartments, finding old belongings, it's probably haunted by the tenants, and so on and so on. Well, this movie gives us the best part of an abandoned apartment building...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 24: The Snowman First things first: This isn't really a horror film. I thought it was but it turned out to be more of a suspense/mystery movie instead. This film is based on one in a series of swedish crime novels about grizzled detective Harry Hole (another contender for worst protagonist name ever). In this story, he is investigating a series of disappearances primarily consisting of mothers from unhappy marriages (or something?). And- this part isn't really commented on in the movie and doesn't really amount to anything tangible- each disappearance is marked by the presence of a misshapen and rather awkward-looking snowman outside each person's home. While watching this film, I really enjoyed it. It's got a lot of things going on, a lot of subplots that all seem to be connected, and you're constantly kept wondering how it all fits together and who the killer is. Vague spoiler alert: ...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 23: Happy Death Day All in all I thought this was a fun movie and I really enjoyed it. That being said, it wasn't incredibly deep and there were a few goofy logistical errors in it but it did some new things that I wasn't expecting. I think it's safe to say that it's only natural to compare this to Groundhog Day- the movie even (briefly) does the same- but inviting that comparison is kind of a risky move because everything the two movies have in common was almost unanimously done better in Groundhog Day. For anyone who isn't familiar with this film, it's about a college sorority girl who wakes up on her birthday, has kind of a bad day, and then a masked individual shows up and kills her. She wakes up, however, and it's the same day, again. She lives the same day over and over, and each time she gets killed again and again, and so she has to find out who her killer is and how to avoi...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 22: The Forgotten Now don't get this movie confused with the 2004 Julianne Moore film; this one is from 2014 and is British. It's about a kid who goes to live with his dad in an abandoned apartment complex, and he starts hearing noises coming from the flat next door. He meets a girl who helps him investigate it, and long story short not really ghosts but sort of ghosts. This was a fairly slow-paced movie with very little dialogue, but for the most part it works. The atmosphere is super strong in this movie- it even gives me a slight Silent Hill vibe (old-school Silent Hill, like the first game and parts of the second) during all of the portions where the characters are walking around in the dark with lanterns. It was pretty spooky and it kept me interested, though in the end it didn't amount to much. Speaking of the end, I don't understand the ending at all. The girl turns out to be the child o...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 20: The Amityville Horror First things first: This movie is relatively long, and has a fairly slow pace. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just the kind of movie you have to be in the right mindset for. That being said, I think it does what it's trying to do really effectively. It's not gory, nor are there really any jump scares (even for so old of a film)- the horror instead comes from the atmosphere and the tension the movie puts forth. You, the viewer, are scared because the characters are scared. The film does a fairly good job of showing rather than telling- we don't necessarily see anything scary actually happening, but we see the effects of the scary things on the characters. The main character, for example, spends the majority of the movie in a downward spiral towards insanity, and every scene it's more apparent than the one before (not only in his behavior, but also in t...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 18: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre I've seen a few of the more recent Texas Chainsaw movies, but never the original. I was actually kind of amazed at how slight this movie is- not necessarily in a bad way- aside from the bit with the hitchhiker near the beginning, nothing really happens until about the halfway point of the movie (at least, no violence or significant tension anyway). But rather than criticize the movie for it, I actually think it makes for an interesting juxtaposition when you then watch the second half, which is full of insanity and kind of terrifying on a base level. I can definitely see why this movie became an instant classic- the villains (what little we see of them) are so unsettling, both in appearance and demeanor, and you really feel powerless along with the protagonist once they catch her. It's interesting to see what this series evolved into (such as with the much-higher-budget ...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 17: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House Tonight, I watched this movie on Netflix. It sounded interesting, and had some good ratings. Sounds good, right? I found this movie incredibly hard to watch. First and foremost, it's slow as molasses. It's saying something when a ninety-minute movie can be summed up in its entirety (darn near every single plot point, each and every scene) in four paragraphs, as it was on the Wikipedia synopsis. Not only is the movie's pacing slow, but it begins and ends with a narration/monologue from the main character, who I swear has a good second and a half between each and every word she says. I felt like her voice was being slowed down, or maybe the director told her that she was getting paid hourly until she finished her monologue, so she decided to milk the clock for all it was worth. Second, I found the story hard to follow as well. (Spoilers ahead.) When w...

So, when looking back at my movie reviews from 2017, the only Facebook post I made on October 16th was a single sentence: "I Downloaded a Ghost was the scariest movie I have ever seen." Obviously this isn't a formal review, and if you've even seen a trailer for the movie you can probably tell my post was a joke, but I decided to include it anyway. And instead of a photo of the poster, I found a box of old papers today and one of them is a series of one-panel comics I drew for my wife, showing how the plot of I Downloaded... could have been improved. So, consider that the body of today's review. (The "Psst... I love you" bit at the bottom was intended for my wife, but hey, if you're reading this, then that means I love you too!)

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 15: Don't Kill It I noticed this on Netflix and thought I'd give it a shot since none of the other movies I wanted to watch were available for streaming, and I have to say I was kind of blown away by how much I enjoyed it. Don't Kill It follows a demon hunter who gets hired to stop a demon that possesses people, but transfers itself to anyone who kills its host. So it possesses a guy, drives that man to go on a killing spree, and then when that guy inevitably gets killed it transfers to his killer, who then goes on another killing spree until they get killed, and so on and so on. Dolph Lundgren plays the savvy demon hunter who knows all about this demon and has a plan to stop it. The movie itself is a fun watch- the main character is likable enough, and Dolph Lundgren really carries himself well as the aged and skilled demon hunter who's seen his share of dark spirits. There's something ter...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 14: Jason X Since I watched a Friday the 13th movie for Friday the 13th, I considered watching Saturday the 14th for Saturday the 14th- however, I couldn't find a good place to download it and I remember it not being very good. So I watched Jason X instead. Remember how Jason went to hell at the very end of Jason Goes to Hell? Well, I guess that didn't actually happen because now he's locked up in a government facility where they're conducting tests on him or something. He ends up getting free but then is trapped in cryostasis, and bingo bango bongo he's accidentally revived in the future on a spaceship and the galaxy still isn't ready for ol' Jason Voorhees! This movie clearly didn't take itself very seriously, and that's a good thing. It was a fairly fun watch, the characters aren't overtly unlikeable, and plenty of the kills are clever and interesting. (Like the woman...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 13: Jason Goes to Hell- The Final Friday I knew I had to do a Friday the 13th movie (since it was, you know, Friday the 13th), so I decided to watch one that I haven't already seen. The only options were this one, or Jason X. So I went with this one. This was an... interesting take on a Friday the 13th movie, to say the least. I like how it started out- I liked the idea of a special ops team setting up a sting operation to catch Jason Voorhees, because if he was the unstoppable supernatural being that the past couple movies have set him up to be, the world WOULD know about him by this point (which is a fact so many franchises don't even bother to acknowledge). The actual method for attracting Jason was a little weird (he supposedly goes after immoral people taking drugs and having premarital sex- the movie even points this out at least once- but the girl in the opening was by herself, just taking a sho...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 11: American Poltergeist I don't have a ton to say about this movie; it was really bad. Low budget, terrible acting, the dialogue was stilted and unlike anything anyone would ever say in real life, and for being called "American Poltergeist" you'd assume a poltergeist would be the main antagonist of the movie, right? Instead, I guess there's a poltergeist present, but virtually all of the kills (more on that in a moment) are done by a woman who's working with the poltergeist, not the poltergeist itself. Notice I didn't say she was possessed; she wasn't. As far as I could tell she was in full control of her faculties, and when all of the kills occurred the poltergeist was standing nearby just... watching, I guess? And for that matter, is it really a poltergeist when it has a physical form? I don't think so. This movie unravels more and more as you study it. The kills in thi...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 10: Rings After watching The Ring twO yesterday, I figured I might as well go ahead and watch the reboot (or whatever this is). I hoped it was going to be good- and it started off kind of interesting. The first portion of the movie's concept is neat: a college professor stumbles across the old VHS tape and (somehow) figures out its mechanics, and then proceeds to turn it into a science project. He organizes a group of college students to watch the tape, then they convince someone else to watch it, and so on and so on, so that he can study Samara and determine what it means about the nature of a soul and the afterlife. Cool, right? Well, if that were the focus of the movie then I'd say this sounds like a great movie. Instead, much like the cursed tape portion of The Ring twO, it goes on for about twenty minutes and then is completely forgotten. Instead, the movie follows a different character who watche...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 9- The Ring twO I remember watching The Ring in theaters when it first came out, and I remember absolutely loving it (or, at the very least, it terrified me so much I remember having difficulty even just talking about it with friends a few days later). Since this was around the time I started getting interested in horror movies, for a long time The Ring was the last movie that I could remember truly scaring me. So, when it occurred to me that it's been twelve years and I had still never watched the sequel, I thought, what better time? Frankly, I wish I hadn't. This movie was bad. Really bad. To start, Naomi Watts (who is very good in lots of other movies, including Funny Games, which I just watched the other day and came out around this time) is just awful in this. Second, the kid who plays her son does an awful job as well- for the first half of the movie his only expression is "look of bemusemen...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 9: 13 Demons I saw this in the Horror section of Netflix and thought I'd give it a try. The premise is a fun idea- three friends find an old banned board game and try it out, but it drives them crazy and they start murdering people because they think it's all part of the game. Sounds like fun, right? The movie starts off fun (though it's clearly low-budget and there's a lot of technical issues, like much of the dialogue being poorly ADR'd in- though they mask a lot of the issues with clever camerawork and effects) but by the midpoint of the movie it gets incredibly dull. Any sort of plot is laid bare fairly early on, so it's just kind of a matter of waiting as it unfolds,  and there's a big like 30-minute chunk of the movie that's just two of the main characters arguing with each other in what was supposed to sound like faux-medieval language. There's a tiny twist near the v...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 6: Funny Games Wow. So, there's a lot to unpack here. First off, this movie is one of the most genuinely terrifying and unsettling movies I've ever seen, and certainly the most so I've seen in the last year. I don't know if it's just because home invasion seems to be a recurring fear of mine, or also the way this movie is set up, with the way the tension builds, then subsides, and then builds again; this movie was horrifying, but I couldn't stop watching. It's got some weird bits though. First, there's a big section right in the middle where the pace really, really slows down; I'm sure it's meant to contrast the constant tension from the entire film before and after that, but this was the only portion of the movie where I seriously considered stopping it and finished the rest of the movie later. Second, there's some really bizarre fourth-wall-breaks in this movie tha...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 5: Abattoir I found this movie kind of hard to follow for most of it, which is disappointing because I feel like all of the components were really good. The plot started off really really interesting- the main character's sister's (I think?) family gets murdered, and when she tries to investigate the house where it happened (which has been sold, very soon after) she realizes the entire room where the murders took place is gone. Like, someone came in and stripped away the walls and ceiling and everything in the room. She looks into it further, and finds out that there's been a series of bizarre murders where immediately afterwards the builders are purchased, and somehow the room of the murders are gutted and removed. Then the movie gets into this weird space in the middle where the main character travels to some backwater town where everyone is rude and nobody answers any of her questions, and it tu...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October Day 4: The Ouija Experiment 2: Theatre of Death (aka The Ouija Resurrection) Full disclosure: This is a sequel and I have never seen the original. At least I don't think I have. However, I can't imagine this movie being any better if I had. This movie was so awful I spent basically the entire movie debating whether it was intentionally bad or not. But in the end I decided that no, I'm fairly certain this was meant to be a serious movie. It's bad, but not so obviously bad that they clearly meant to make a bad film; rather, everything about it is just barely sub-par enough to make it an embarrassment for everyone involved. The thing that caught my attention the most for being so bad was the acting. I'm guessing this movie was extremely low-budget (as indicated by... well, everything), but how expensive is it to get actors that can actually act instead of just read lines off a page? Was there a p...

This review was originally written in October 2017. Horror Movie October day 3: Viral Full disclosure: I'm sick and miserable today so that probably colored my perception of this movie. But overall I found this movie incredibly hard to follow because it felt like nothing happened for most of it. It's a story of two sisters caught in the middle of some sort of an outbreak (more on that later) and they're.... trying to reach their dad? Or something? I don't know. Nothing happened for the first thirty minutes of the movie (even after the outbreak started, it was just kind of the characters hanging out) and once it did the pacing was just really off. I could never tell what the stakes were because at one point the government is like hunting down people who are infected, but then the next moment they're gone and one of the characters is taken to a hospital which is still in operation and not at all swarmed with infected people, but then the next moment government helicop...