Gabe Reviews Horror

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...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #27- Little Monsters (2019) I was so confused watching this movie. Where's Fred Savage? Where's Howie Mandel? Nobody went under a single bed in the entire runtime! ...Just kidding. I only knew about this movie because I saw it on several "top 10 zombie movies" lists, so I went in with basically no expectations except that it was going to be good. I'm not sure what I WAS expecting, but whatever that was, I'm not sure I got it. This movie clearly started as a very specific story pitch- "What if a group of school children were caught in a zombie outbreak and their teacher had to try and distract them so they didn't realize they were in danger"- and then the finished product didn't stray very far from that premise. In that way, it succeeded? I guess? The thing is, I can tell this was meant to be a comedy (at least partially). I could see all of the intended humor...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #26- Deadgirl (2008) First things first: This movie is MESSED UP. Of all of the movies I've watched this month, this one may be the most disturbing and inappropriate for many audiences. (There's been some graphic nudity in earlier films, I guess, but this whole movie is something that can't really be censored.) So if anyone is planning on watching this for the first time, know going in that it's about a very perverse subject matter and it is incredibly graphic and should only be watched by mature audiences. That being said, this movie is nothing if not well written. It's hard to hear about a premise like this one (as well as what I know the writer from, more on that later) and assume it's going to be delivered with any kind of consideration or tact, but this one is written about as deliberately and as intelligently as I could have expected. The characters are all realistic (even...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #25- World War Z (2013) The first thing that struck me as odd was how incredibly bloodless this movie was. For a genre that's all about blood, gore, and dismemberment, seeing a zombie outbreak with barely a drop of blood (from zombies, anyway) was VERY weird. I did like how the early portion of the film showed varying takes on how people react in a crisis- a junkie shows some real compassion, and a cop ignores straight-up murder in order to serve his own self-interests. It was an interesting way to get me invested in the story being told that I hadn't considered. Unfortunately, that investment didn't pay dividends. The most damning criticism I can give of this movie is that it's aggressively mediocre. I didn't feel like it did anything particularly new, I didn't feel like it did anything particularly well, but I didn't feel like it did anything particularly badly either. Thi...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #24- Don't Breathe 2 (2021) Once again, I was too busy to watch my regularly-scheduled zombie film (sorry but not really, Poultrygeist). So this is another movie we saw at the Drive-In a week or so ago. It's been a while since I saw Don't Breathe, so when this movie started out I was a little confused as to how it followed after the previous one. A quick recap- Don't Breathe told the story of a group of ne'er-do-wells who planned on breaking into a blind man's house to steal some settlement money he was awarded after a wrongful death legal suit, but when they got into his house it turns out the guy's an ex-Navy Seal and he stalks and kills most of them. However, it turns out he's got a girl chained up in his basement (the rich girl who killed his daughter in a hit-and-run, hence the settlement) and he has impregnated her in order to give himself a new daughter? So the ha...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #23- Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021) I'm on a road trip right now and didn't have time to watch a zombie movie, so this is a review for a different horror movie we saw at the drive-in a week or so ago. I'll go on the record any day and say that I loved the first Escape Room movie, so much that it prompted me to look up and watch basically every Escape Room-themed movie I could find (nearly all of which are terrible). So I was super excited when I heard that it got an actual sequel! The previous movie left off on a good note, and when all was said and done I'm not sure if the second movie quite delivered on the premise or not. But overall it was definitely a fun time, even if it wasn't as good as the first. Ultimately this movie just kind of feels... lesser, in just about every way, compared to the previous one. The first movie had more rooms, more puzzles, more twists (e...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #22- 28 Weeks Later (2007) I think it's interesting that, in all of the zombie movies I've watched so far, basically none of them have dealt with the Reconstruction phase of a zombie apocalypse- so many of them deal with the immediate outbreak, a few deal with the weeks after the outbreak, and then the rest deal with the far future where what's going to be rebuilt is already rebuilt (and the fat cats are sitting on top smoking cigars or whatever). This movie, however, dealt directly with the Reconstruction, and showed the dangers and problems that can arise therein. It's noteworthy that the filmmakers decided to go with a more traditional look and sound to this movie (rather than the low-quality video and audio of the previous one). However, they clearly still wanted to keep a lower-tech, closer look to the cinematography, so they had most of the camerawork be handheld and unsteady. I t...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #21- 28 Days Later (2002) I'm kind of shocked I went this long before seeing this film; I remember it being really popular among my friends when it first came out, and looking back I wonder if it had something to do with this being one of the first feature films shot on video (and all of my friends were geeks in the video program at our school). Who knows. Speaking of which, I'll get the bad out of the way first: this movie looks and sounds bad. It surely wasn't a budget issue (this movie obviously had a HUGE budget, considering how much of it takes place in completely empty metropolitan London and all of the intense special effects and whatnot), so I'm inclined to think the director was going for a specific look, but the audio sounds poorly mixed during most of the movie and the low-quality video is also cut and edited in such a way that it looks cheap, and many action sequences were h...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #20- Pontypool (2008) [Note from Gabe in 2024: When writing this review in 2021 I legitimately forgot I had already written a Pontypool review five years previous. As such, this is an entirely new take and I actually think it's funny to see how similar and/or different my thoughts were.] Now THIS is what it's like to watch an actual movie from an actual filmmaker that actually cares about the product they're putting out! Despite having seen this movie before (I've watched it several times over the years, though it's been a long time) I was more gripped and intrigued in the first two minutes of this film than I was at any point in the entire Resident Evil franchise. Everything about this movie is a perfect fit for me- I love movies set in one centralized location, I love stories about down-to-earth people dealing with something supernatural, and I've especially grown to appreciat...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #19- Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) First things first, I'm not going to spend this one complaining about how it has nothing to do with the game series, I promise. Second, I'm so glad to be done with this series. Third, I think it is ABSOLUTELY BONKERS that this series was 100% written all by the same singular person, and that same singular person directed nearly all of them, because PAUL W.S. ANDERSON CANNOT MAKE UP HIS MIND ABOUT WHAT HE WANTS THIS SERIES TO BE. Remember how JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson disagreed so hard on the Star Wars sequels that the end result is a confused, convoluted mess that contradicts itself left and right? This series does that even worse, AND IT WAS ALL BY ONE PERSON! I joked previously about how (now THREE) previous films in the series ended on some big cliffhanger, and then the following film IMMEDIATELY swept it under the rug to go in a different direct...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #18- Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) I've said the last couple days that I don't want to keep complaining about how these aren't accurate to the games (or something like that), but watching this one I had a revelation that I think will help explain why I've done that so much. Imagine if another popular IP- let's say Harry Potter- got its first movie adaptation, and it was popular enough to warrant numerous sequels. You go to watch them one day, after having been a fan of the books, but when you do, you realize some very odd things: First, Harry Potter isn't even the main character. Instead, the series is about this other character, wholly made-up for the movie. This character is shown to be the best wizard in all the Wizarding World, and everybody knows it. The entire story is about how this new character is the key to everything. Second, the first couple movies take place at ...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #17- Resident Evil: Afterlife Ah, another Resident Evil film, another movie that cares so little about its characters. This one at least has the benefit of having a setting and story that are actually kind of interesting- I like the idea of a safe haven being broadcast that turns out to actually be a trap set by the people who created the zombies, and the prison is actually pretty cool of a location (even if it's absurd how many torches these people keep lit, I mean come on people, you're using like twenty times as many torches as you have people). But again, all of the characters are just generic-person-with-generic-wardrobe and I'm expected to not only tell them apart, but also care about them. The only character I cared remotely about was Chris Redfield (again, another holdover from the games but with no explanation of why he's here or what his place is in this story, he's just.....

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #16- Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) Filmmakers everywhere, I want you to repeat after me:  Being   British   Doesn't   Make   Someone   Scary. It wasn't true in the first one, and it certainly isn't true now. After the first film dealt with the inciting incident of the zombie apocalypse, and then the second dealt with the immediate aftermath and development of that apocalypse, this one decided to just go ahead and skip... well, literally everything interesting about dealing with a zombie apocalypse, as well as skipping forward several years to the point where everyone is out in the desert and everyone is dirty (except for the bad guys, who are inexplicably still wearing suits and ties despite the breakdown of society). I honestly don't know if that alone is a problem, or if several movies I've watched this month just do it really poorly? This one ...