Gabe Reviews Horror

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #15 - Memorial Day (1999) Watch it here on YouTube! I had a weird experience watching this movie: I watched it through one time, found it pretty dull and hard to follow for most of it, but then at the end I was actually intrigued enough to go back and watch it (or at least listen to it while I was working) for a second time, to see if I could follow it better that time. Was it worth it? Let's find out. Memorial Day is a no-budget shot-on-video production about a group of nine friends out on a camping trip to help Rachel, one of the friends, cope with the accidental drowning of her adopted brother Danny three years previous. While everyone is sitting around the campfire telling stories and drinking beers, a masked killer starts murdering the friends one by one, until some secrets are laid bare and the truth behind Danny's death comes to light. At first blush this movie looks and sounds terrible. It's clearly just shot on a handheld camcorde...

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #14 - Cinco De Mayo (2013) Watch it here on Tubi! When this movie started up (I watched it on Tubi, using the link above) my first thought was, "Oh, this seems like it might be fun." It had this neat 80s VHS aesthetic, and was clearly not taking itself too seriously. But then after like 30 seconds I realized the segment I was watching wasn't part of the movie itself, it was some kind of a TV bumper (much like when Svengoolie or Elvira would introduce a film on TV) advertising another, different movie. When the actual movie started up, I realized it was not nearly as fun as I had hoped. [Edit from after finishing this review: it appears that this TV bumper WAS actually part of Cinco De Mayo, intentionally made to bookend the movie? That just raises more questions than it answers. When the movie is only 70 minutes long, why spend ten of those minutes on a fictional movie that looks way more fun than the movie people presumably paid to see?...

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #13 - The Wicker Tree (2011) Watch it here on YouTube! The Wicker Tree is about a pair of Texan missionaries- an apparently world-famous singer named Beth and her cowboy fiance Steve- who go on a mission trip to Scotland, where Beth is supposed to sing some Christian songs and lead some worship services for the people in a small community there. (At least... I think that's what their goal was, the two of them are apparently planning this trip to be two years long but after one single performance at a Scottish church in the city they're seemingly free to go bugger off into the countryside at the request of a couple they meet, so I'm not entirely sure what was intended at the start.) They attract the attention of a couple who lead a religious cult, and the cult attempts to seduce them in order to eventually sacrifice them in a pagan ritual to grant their village fertility and prosperity, exactly as you've seen in other similar folk horro...

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #12 - Arbor Demon (2016) Watch it here on Tubi! So, this is the type of movie I was afraid I would encounter when making the list for this October's movies: a movie that seems  like it's themed along a specific holiday, but it actually isn't. Wikipedia had Arbor Demon listed as being an Arbor Day movie, but as far as I could tell the movie never mentions Arbor Day a single time (I even re-watched the beginning a couple times to make sure they didn't briefly mention the date or show a calendar or something; if there was such an indicator I missed it, and I looked pretty hard). Yeah the title of the movie evokes Arbor Day, but "arbor" just means "tree" so it tracks that this movie is about a tree demon (or something like it). Apparently it didn't even have the same title during development- it was originally called "Enclosure" so it seems unlikely that Arbor Day was an integral part of the film at any po...

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #11 - Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! (2006) Watch it here on YouTube! Can I just review Easter Casket again instead of this one? Easter Bunny, Kill Kill was a deeply uncomfortable movie to watch. I'm just gonna get that right out there. It's a no-budget movie shot on cheap video with virtually nothing going for it. I know I gave Easter Casket a lot of guff for its low production value but at least that movie was fun to laugh at; I can't say the same about Easter Bunny Kill Kill. Let me try and get through the plot. EBKK starts off with a character named Remington (I can't really call him the protagonist, because we aren't meant to root for him, but he certainly gets the most screentime) as he robs a convenience store and kills the clerk. He then tries to lay low by insinuating himself into the home of his girlfriend, a single mother named Mindy, and her son Nicholas. Nicholas is sixteen years old but severely mentally challenged, and ob...

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #10 - Easter Casket (2013) [This movie does not appear to be streaming anywhere for free; I had to pay $3 for a two-day rental on Vimeo to watch it myself. I don't recommend anyone else do so, but if you want, be my guest.] Where to begin? Easter Casket is a low-budget shot-on-video movie about a Catholic priest with a magical Iron Man suit who is following the commands of Mega Pope, trying to stop the apotheosis of an ancient deity. (No part of that was a joke, it's in the actual movie.) You see, back in the day, Peter Cottontail- aka the Easter Bunny- aka the Mesopotamian fertility god Tammuz- was defeated by the Christian god and left in a weakened state. After thousands of years he has regained power by manipulating the Catholic church into adopting various pagan rituals into their celebration of Christ's death and resurrection- iconography of rabbits, eggs, chocolate, and so on- so that power would be funnelled to Tammuz. This movie ...

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #9 - April Fool's Day (2008) Watch it here on Tubi! So, a brief disclaimer before starting this review: I was in a bad mood when I watched this movie. I had been looking forward to getting dinner from my favorite local pizza place, but found out at the last minute that they were out of dough so I had to get a pizza from somewhere else. And then that other pizza place, forgot to give me dipping sauce with my breadsticks. I'll try not to let this color my review but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't have liked the movie more if I got to enjoy my favorite pizza while watching it. I went into this assuming that it was a remake of the 1986 movie by the same name, which I reviewed yesterday; unfortunately, much like when you expect to get your favorite pizza but they run out of dough so you have to settle for something less than, it turned out that this is its own movie, completely unrelated to the one I already reviewed. And much like how t...