Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #31 - Night of the Demons (1988) Final movie for October 2023! I hope you all had a wonderful month! Night of the Demons is a movie about a group of teens that all hate each other, that go to a Halloween party at an abandoned funeral parlor. After playing a Bloody Mary-esque group game, one of the teens is possessed by a demon. She then shoves a stick of lipstick into her boob and kills most of the other teens, who become possessed by demons as well I guess, and the remaining two manage to escape. The film finishes out with an endcap to a scene at the start of the movie about an old man who gets a taste of his own medicine after trying to sabotage some apples for Trick-or-Treaters. The End. I don't know how obvious it was through my lack of effort in that recap, but I didn't much care for this movie. None of the characters were likable (it's quite an accomplishment that the clingy, st...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #30 - Phantasm (1979) Phantasm is a film about a boy (Mike) and his older brother (Jody) investigating a creepy mortician at the local funeral home who is suspected of stealing bodies before they're buried. Their investigation leads to the discovery of numerous supernatural horrors, including shrunken slaves made from the reanimated corpses of the dead, flying metal spheres that drill into people's heads, and the fact that the mortician is apparently an alien that can regenerate limbs and is stealing corpses for cheap labor back on his home planet. Also, it turns out it was all a dream. (Or was it?) While I feel like I probably saw this movie once when I was a child, I remembered almost nothing about it. That might be because the first thirty minutes is incredibly boring (Mike spends most of it tailing people and breaking into various places all because he saw the mortician lift something...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #29 - Darkness Falls (2003) Darkness Falls revolves around the eponymous town of the same name, where a folk tale about the "tooth fairy" (a local woman who would reward children for losing their baby teeth) turned sinister when some children went missing and the woman was suspected of taking them. A posse caught and killed her (right before the children returned unharmed), leaving her angry spirit to take vengeance. The protagonist is Kyle, whose mother was killed by the evil tooth fairy ghost when he was a kid, and now that he's grown up he has to help his childhood friend Caitlin and her family escape from this evil force. The first thing that jumps out at me as being odd in this movie is that a large part of the plot is Kyle trying to stop Caitlin's brother Michael from being haunted/killed by the evil ghost tooth fairy. It's bizarre to me because the actor playing Micha...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #28 - Audition (1999) Audition is a film about Shigeharu Aoyama, a widower who decides to find himself a new wife at the urging of his son. But being a hard-working executive-type, he doesn't have the time to go back out into the dating game- so he gets his friend, a film producer, to hold an audition for a fake movie, with the express purpose of instead finding Shigeharu the perfect woman to marry. He instantly falls for Asami, a mysterious and seemingly meek girl, and he becomes obsessed with making her his wife. But the more he tries to find out about her, the more things start to not add up, and the more danger Shigeharu gets himself into... This is a hard movie to watch, it has to be said. I saw this for the first time about a year ago- it was one of those movies I had on my watch list for years but never got around to- and it was hard to watch the first time, doubly so this time around....

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #27 - Tourist Trap (1979) Tourist Trap is a film about a group of friends driving down an old mountain road, when car trouble gets them stranded outside of a closed roadside wax museum. The owner, Slauson, offers to help them fix their car, and ultimately the friends get split up and start getting killed- possibly by sentient mannequins, possibly by Slauson's deranged brother (with or without the aid of sentient mannequins). This is a WILD movie. I first saw it about fifteen years ago, with a group of friends (one of whom described this film as "the worst use of telekinesis ever") and I do think it works best as a group activity. There's some genuinely creepy and unexpected moments, but a lot of the runtime is kind of dull, and the bizarre nature of the villain's methods do nearly all of the heavy lifting to keep this movie interesting- the characters aren't very memorab...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #26 - Spookies (1986) So, I have a strong suspicion about this movie that could probably be verified by checking the IMDB trivia, but I'm purposely waiting until after I've written the bulk of my review before I do so. Spookies is a film about a group of... teens? (And someone's dad?) driving to... a party? (I think?) who end up stopping at a big spooky mansion along the way. Once there, they discover a haunted Ouija board, and one of them gets possessed. Meanwhile, the house is also inhabited by some kind of ghoul or vampire or something that is trying to resurrect his dead wife, and to that end he summons a bunch of monsters to terrorize the... (teens?) because somehow that will resurrect his wife. The... (teens?) split up and some are killed by monsters but most aren't, the dead wife gets resurrected but then tries to escape and fights off a bunch of zombies but then gets caugh...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #25 - Society (1989) THIS IS A MOVIE WHERE SOMEONE PUNCHES A GUY IN THE DICK SO HARD HIS FIST COMES OUT THE GUY'S FACE, WHICH HE THEN GRABS AND USES TO TURN THE GUY INSIDE OUT. Ahem. Pardon me, I just had to make that clear. Society is an extremely 80s movie that follows Bill, the poorly-adjusted son of a high-class family who has been having paranoid delusions. Some of his delusions involve dreams of defending himself from his parents with a knife, thoughts that his parents aren't really his parents, paranoid ideation of an alien class of people killing those that try to expose the truth, and more. When he catches wind of some bizarre, incestuous happenings between his parents, his sister, and other people in their social circle, Bill becomes a target of these people trying to stop the truth from getting out. Or is Bill just imagining it? (He totes isn't imagining it, there's som...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #24 - The Wailing (2016) The Wailing is a Korean film about Jong-goo, a detective investigating a rash of bizarre and brutal murders across the countryside in his small village. While at first the murders all seem linked by a strange skin disease suffered by the attackers, Jong-goo hears tales of a local Japanese immigrant being somehow connected. When following this lead, Jong-goo's daughter seemingly becomes infected by the disease, but a renowned shaman claims she's possessed by a demon, and attempts a ritual to drive the demon out. At the same time the Japanese man is performing a ritual that seemingly brings a dead man back to life as a zombie, Jong-goo rounds up a posse to go kill the Japanese man but they fight the zombie instead, then they accidentally kill the Japanese man by hitting him with their car, but then it seems like the Japanese man wasn't actually involved and inst...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #23 - As Above, So Below (2014) As Above, So Below is a found-footage style film that follows Scarlett, an archaeologist, as she ventures into the catacombs beneath Paris with a group of urban explorers to try and find the hidden tomb of Nicolas Flamel and the Philosopher's Stone. However, their journey is a dangerous one, with twists and turns that bring up horrors of the past as they mirror the journey taken by Dante Alighieri. Will they be able to overcome their personal demons, or will they be forever lost in the endless passages beneath the city? To be brief, I think this is a fantastic movie and any negative things I have to say about it are going to be pedantic and will be layered with criticisms of the found-footage style as a whole. So if you don't want to hear any of that, I'll just say right here that I really think this is one of the better found-footage movies out there, ...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #22 - Thir13en Ghosts (2001) Thirthirteenen Ghosts is a film about Arthur, a down-on-his luck widower, who finds out that his weird uncle Cyrus has died and left his state-of-the-art mansion to him and his children (and his live-in nanny I guess). But when they move in, it turns out that the house isn't just a house- it's an infernal machine with twelve ghosts trapped inside with a mechanism that's going to open a portal to hell or something, and the only way to stop it is for Arthur to sacrifice himself (and become the thirteenth ghost). But there may be more at play than just a dead uncle's plot... First things first, while I think there's a lot that's really cool about this movie, I do need to say right at the top that it's a bad movie. The writing has its moments but is ultimately a bunch of nonsense, the acting is over-the-top from every single person on screen, t...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #21 - Dog Soldiers (2002) Dog Soldiers is the story of a group of British soldiers on a training mission, when they are attacked and pursued by a group of werewolves. With the help of a passing local, they take shelter inside a seemingly-abandoned home and attempt a last stand against the vicious predators- but will they make it until daybreak? Or is the true enemy already inside the house? I had never even heard of this movie before today, and simply put, I was blown away. This movie is incredibly well-produced, fantastically written, and although it looks slightly low-budget compared to some other films I've seen, it definitely knows its limits and the director only showed what they knew would look good on-screen. It's incredibly well-paced, and the atmosphere subtly shifts between hopelessness and camaraderie throughout its runtime as the script really utilizes the fact that the protag...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #20 - Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) This movie is quite remarkable in that I guarantee the creation process was as streamlined as possible: Someone came up with the name "Killer Klowns from Outer Space", and then the writing, directing, costumes, special effects, and filming all followed logically from that starting point with no deviation at all. Killer Klowns from Outer Space follows a small town beset upon by the eponymous Klowns, who show up, cause mayhem, and then leave. Our protagonists are two college kids who witness their arrival, find out the Klowns are up to no good, and try to alert the police. Cue about 45 minutes of people being Killed by clown-themed hijinx, then the protagonists go to the Klowns' ship, cue 20 more minutes of clown-themed hijinx, then everything blows up and the movie ends. There's really not much more to it than that. This movie has to ge...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #19 - House of 1000 Corpses (2003) House of 1000 Corpses follows a group of four friends driving across the country to write a book about offbeat roadside attractions. They find one for the record books in the form of Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters & Mayhem, where Captain Spaulding himself gives them a tour of historical serial killers and maniacs. Intrigued by the story of Dr. Satan, a local serial killer who was never caught, the teens drive into the dark rainy countryside to find it. Along the way, they're lured into the home of a crazy redneck murder family, most of them eventually are killed, and then as the only survivor escapes we're left with a literal "The End?" title card. First things first: this movie looks great on-screen, but it's really hard for me to care about yet another crazy redneck murder family, let alone one who puts as much time and ef...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #18 - Ghost Ship (2002) Ghost Ship is a movie I've seen many times, and always enjoyed. I think it's not on the same level as some of the other films I've watched this month, but it's a fun movie with some spooky setpieces and a great atmosphere (and one of the most memorable opening scenes in all of horror, I think most people would agree). The movie follows the crew of the Arctic Warrior, an oceanic salvage ship. After coming back from a job and ready to take some time off, the crew is approached by Jack, a weather service pilot who spotted a ship adrift in international waters. He took some photos, and it appears to be an abandoned ocean liner- if they can get it back in one piece it'll be worth a lot of money, so the crew agrees to take the job, but Jack insists that he come along. So they head out, and find the ship- the Antonia Graza- derelict and taking on water. Aboard...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #17 - Goosebumps (2015) Ermahgerd! Gersberms! In case it wasn't obvious, Goosebumps is a film adaptation of the wildly popular series of children's books of the same name. The plot follows Zach, a teenager who just moved into a small town, when he begins to suspect the next-door neighbor of hurting (or possibly killing) his daughter. After sneaking into the neighbor's house, Zach learns that the neighbor is none other than famed horror writer R.L. Stine, creator of the Goosebumps series- but the series turns out to be more than simply fiction, and all of the monsters from the various books start coming into the real world. First things first, I'm not going to be super harsh on this film because it's clearly meant to be (more or less) a children's movie, so I'll give it a pass for being more action- and comedy-oriented than strictly horror. The only bad thing I have to ...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #16 - The Thing (1982) The Thing follows the crew of an antarctic research facility, who are beset upon by some Norwegian researchers chasing a dog across the tundra. The Norwegians get themselves killed and the protagonists take in the dog, and it's later discovered that the Norwegian base was destroyed with extreme prejudice shortly after recovering some kind of an alien lifeform that was frozen in the ice. This life form can seemingly infect, assimilate, and replace any living organism it comes across, and... hey, has anyone seen that dog they were trying to blow up? It's probably around here somewhere. Anyway, the rest of the movie has the protagonists pointing flamethrowers at one another, nobody can trust anybody else, and the future looks more and more bleak when they begin to realize what would happen if this creature were to reach the rest of civilization. Maybe they should sit d...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #15 - Inferno (1980) I'm quickly learning that I don't care for Dario Argento. This was the first time I'd seen Inferno and I watched Suspiria last year, both movies were incredibly similar in a lot of ways, and I simply didn't like either one, and as I read up on these two films the things I didn't like about them seem to be referred to as staples of Argento's work. Let me briefly summarize Inferno. Inferno is (I guess?) about a student (Mark) who finds out his sister (Rose) has been reading an old book that's led her to believe that there's a witch or something hiding underneath the building she lives in (or the building next door, or both, I'm not too clear on that). She writes him a letter about it, someone else (Sara) finds the letter and gets killed, then some other people get killed, and then there's some more killings and then Mark finds the witch u...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #14 - Session 9 (2001) I had never seen Session 9 before, but I feel like I've noticed it mentioned in a lot of places (lists of best horror movies, lists of influential horror movies, etc.) so I was pretty excited to watch this one. Overall I think it was pretty good but I'm not 100% sure I understand it (or maybe I was just expecting something more than I got). In fact I spent most of the movie not very impressed, until I reached a significant twist near the end that was actually really good, and elevated the rest of the film a bit. I think there's going to be mild spoilers ahead; in order to make some of the points I want to make, I'm going to refer to a certain character as "Dude" in order to hide the twist of who they actually are. So, Session 9 follows an asbestos cleaning crew that gets hired to remove the asbestos from an old insane asylum. The owner, Gordon, sec...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #13 - Strangeland (1998) Strangeland follows a detective, Mike, whose daughter gets abducted, raped, and tortured by CaptHowdy (played by Snider), a local sadist with an obsession for body modification (tribal tattoos, extensive piercings, and even self-torture used to achieve enlightenment) who uses 90s chat rooms to find and lure victims. After getting a lead when someone discovers and recognizes CaptHowdy's septum jewelry at a crime scene, we're treated to the most absurd cat-and-mouse game I've ever seen between Mike and the kidnapper: Mike finds CaptHowdy in a chat room while posing as his niece, and CaptHowdy looks at Mike's fake profile. Mike changes his profile to include one of CaptHowdy's interests, and CaptHowdy immediately notices the change and somehow automatically recognizes it as an indicator that Mike is actually a cop conducting a sting operation. When the st...

This review was originally written in October 2023. Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #12 - Event Horizon (1997) This sci-fi/horror film follows a spaceship crew sent to recover the Event Horizon, an experimental ship that used new technology to fold space and travel faster-than-light. On its maiden voyage, the Event Horizon disappeared without a trace, only to reappear derelict on the edge of the solar system seven years later. The protagonists go to retrieve the ship and investigate what went wrong, taking with them the creator of its experimental gravity engine, and what they find there causes them all to relive traumatic events of their past as they unravel the mystery of how the ship traveled (possibly literally) to hell and back. Event Horizon is one of the greats, there's no other way to put it. The setting and atmosphere for this film are almost unmatched in the annals of horror history, the special effects (not counting the sparse CGI, which leaves something to be des...