Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #26: Night of the Living Dead (1968) I watched (and reviewed) this movie for the first time last year, after hearing about it for decades. I was pretty lukewarm on it then, and on this re-watch I landed pretty squarely in the same place. Night of the Living Dead isn't a BAD movie, by any means. I can tell it was treading new ground and just because it might not hold up to modern sensibilities doesn't mean it's BAD. However, the word I would use to describe it before anything else is "lackluster". The first half of the film is incredibly slow, with basically no dialogue (plenty of people talking to themselves, or a radio broadcast giving atmosphere while the characters mill about), and then the dialogue in the second half feels improvised, or lazily-written. There seems to be very little going on, to the point where in my memory this movie was shorter than a typical film (but...

This review was originally written in 2020, and reposted as part of the Bucket List Challenge in 2022. There may or may not be small differences between the two reviews. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #25: Halloween (2018) I've watched this movie three times: once when it came out, once two years ago when I watched and reviewed the whole series, and once today. Each time I watch it (particularly, each time with more context than the time before) I like it less and less. I would recommend this movie to anyone who has NOT seen the rest of the series, or anyone who maybe saw a smattering of them but who doesn't really remember any of the details. I think this movie is perfectly fine as its own movie, completely disconnected from any other works, but if you try to view it as part of a whole (especially if you watch it strictly as a sequel to the first film, and purposely ignore all of the others) IT. GETS. BONKERS. I'll explain as I go. Sit tight, this is going ...

This review was originally written in 2020, and reposted as part of the Bucket List Challenge in 2022. There may or may not be small differences between the two reviews. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #24: Halloween (1978) So, I watched and reviewed this movie two years ago, along with the rest of the series. This is my first time watching it after having seen all of the others- last time I'd only seen this one and the 2018 sequel, which I'll be reviewing in a few minutes- and my thoughts are largely the same as when I reviewed it then, but there's some more I wanted to add. Because of how the 2018 sequel ignores all of the other movies in the series, I'm trying this time to view these two movies as a piece, since they're the only two "canonical" entries- and as will probably come out in my review (particularly my review of the 2018 sequel) I think that as a two-part story, these movies.... really don't work. More on that later I guess....

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #23: Host (2020) Right out of the gate: this movie is a delight! Short but sweet, Host is the product of a group of people trying to make the best of a bad situation, and although it's not particularly deep or thoughtful, it was exactly what it set out to be. The plot of Host is a simple one: during the 2020 Covid pandemic, a group of friends decide to host a seance over a Zoom call. They don't take it seriously, they break the rules of contacting the other side, bing bang boom, ghosts or demons or something. And that's it! There's no significant character development, there's no gut-wrenching plot twists, just fifty-seven minutes of set-ups and scares. (Yes many of the scares are of the jump variety, but in my opinion there's enough variation and cleverness involved throughout that it's not a dealbreaker for me.) The movie was made on a shoestring budget, and it shows...

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 2021, and reposted as part of the Bucket List Challenge in 2022. There may or may not be small differences between the two reviews. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #21: Zombieland (2009) First things first: After watching this movie I spent the rest of the day craving twinkies. I think we know why. Second, I watched and reviewed this last October, and this time around my thoughts are largely the same, though now that I've also seen its sequel, I can squarely say this one is a much better film. 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 di...

This review was originally written in 2021, and reposted as part of the Bucket List Challenge in 2022. There may or may not be small differences between the two reviews. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #20: 28 Days Later (2002) This is another movie I watched and reviewed last year, so, again, fair warning. 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 di...