Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in October 2019. October Horror Movie Review #30: Hell House LLC Yipee. Another found-footage movie that has zero confidence in its own premise. Let me start this review by saying something infuriating about this film: It starts off as a documentary about a "tragedy" that happened at Hell House, a haunted house attraction in a small town. I put the word "tragedy" in quotations because this movie is so frustratingly vague about its own inciting incident- at no point do they ever give you enough information to be interested in the mystery. Instead, they show several people interviewed as saying, "What happened there? I have no clue" and "You watch the video. YOU tell ME what happened." This video they're referring to (as we see in full) is of a typical customer on opening night of this haunted attraction, going from room to room with all of the other customers, until they get to some stairs, at which point a b...

This review was originally written in October 2019. October Horror Movie Review #23: The Possession of Michael King Well, here we are, with another found-footage movie. Spoilers for my review: I didn't much like this one, and I'm going to complain a lot about technical stuff. Fair warning. So, The Possession of Michael King is a movie about a guy whose wife (whom we presume was a strong believer in the supernatural) recently died, and so he's setting out to debunk the paranormal by subjecting himself to some satanic rituals. Surprise surprise, he ends up getting possessed. Despite being presented as found-footage, many of the scenes could not possibly have been shot without multiple takes or a camera crew (like the scene with the psychic at the very beginning). For most of the film this is hand-waved by our protagonist wearing a thing around his neck that supposedly captures his POV and a shot of his face, but then you need to assume that this (incredibly slight) device som...

This review was originally written in October 2019. October Horror Movie Review #19: The Houses October Built What to say about yet another found-footage movie? I'll say that of the found-footage I've seen so far this one had a better format than most: The footage looks believable, there's a good explanation for why they started recording it in the first place (as opposed to just happening to be filming everything that happens, like Cloverfield or Chronicle or whatever) and the first half of the film was fun and relatable. The second half of the movie (like basically all found-footage) is where it really falls into being just yet another found-footage movie. I don't know if it's generalized fatigue or just found-footage fatigue but I mentally checked out during most of the latter part of this film. I guess I didn't say what this is about? A group of friends decide to start a video project where they travel to haunted house attractions across the country (?) and ...