Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #22: Dawn of the Dead (1978) This is another movie that I watched and reviewed last year, but surprisingly, I actually feel much more lukewarm about it than I did at the time. Some of my thoughts are the same, but not all. The first thing that struck me this go-around is how scattered and disjointed the first thirty minutes of this film feel. Lots of zombie movies seem to start mid-outbreak (like the Dawn of the Dead remake, for example), but generally speaking, they tend to start at a point that helps acclimate the viewer into the setting and to set up their expectations (even if they do so by starting the movie with a sudden, frantic chase scene, like the remake does). This one starts off so... just so weird , I don't even know what to compare it to. It feels like it's picking up mid-story, like maybe it was meant to be an immediate follow-up to Night of the Living Dead? (Except conside...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie Review #7- Dawn of the Dead (2004) Hey, y'all remember when everyone unanimously stood up and said, "Let's make all of our movies GREEN"? Well, it was certainly in full swing in 2004! It's like they made an entire movie, that looked like any other movie, and then just made 100% of the visible colors into a shade of green. Seriously, it's all green. All of it. Even the parts that don't look green are still green. In all seriousness though, I had to open this up with a joke about the green color because otherwise this was a fantastic movie with very little to complain about. We've gotten into the modern era of big-budget blockbuster horror films, so this film has plenty of action, a quick pace to keep it from getting stale, and loads of fully-realized characters that all pull their weight, narratively speaking. I saw this movie back when it first released (if I recall, my best ...

This review was originally written in October 2021. October 2021 Horror Movie #2- Dawn of the Dead Although I'd never seen this movie (I'd seen the 2004 remake, but I'll get to THAT in a few days) I definitely felt like I knew more about this one going in than the previous film, since this one really set a framework that a ton of other media would go on to copy for the next four decades. First things first: this was a HUGE improvement over Night of the Living Dead. Where Night was slow, quiet, and relatively plot-free, Dawn has lots of dialogue, plenty of characters, events after events after events, and explores so many different concepts (whereas Night was basically just one). But Dawn also had lots of quiet moments too- the runtime was almost double that of Night so there was plenty of time to develop the characters and add some introspection- and I was struck by how much I felt like the characters were all fully-realized, three-dimensional people. I don't know how m...