The Gallows

The Gallows (2015)

16% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 102 reviews)

Runtime: 81 minutes

Directed by: Travis Cluff/Chris Lofing

Starring: Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Cassidy Gifford

From: Several companies that should have known better

Yep, this was as atrocious as I expected. Read why below: 

Here's a movie I never thought I would see; I always heard the most dire things about it. However, the combination of hearing a hilarious review about it and seeing it was streaming on Amazon in HD for only a dollar rental, I bit the bullet. Well, I paid too much to see it; this found footage movie was real bad.

The plot is about a random high school in Nebraska where a tragic accident happens during a play known as The Gallows. 20 years later, they try to do the play again; if that isn't dumb enough, the accident involved the gallows themselves malfunctioning and a student hanging himself... so they build another real life gallows that could malfunction again? The stupidity doesn't stop there. There is a cornucopia of stupidity throughout. In the beginning, we see footage from the original play that was filmed in 1993. The people filming are talking through it, which is real nice. It's an info dump, but that information is revealed later anyhow...

What makes this so bad is just not that it's not scary nor that the story is complete nonsense; it's that we end up following 4 teenagers in 2013 and three of the four are complete A-holes. They are the worst stereotypes of teenagers, especially Ryan, who unfortunately films much of what we see. Ryan looks like a douche and is a douche who always says rude things-even to his girlfriend-and you see him be a bully too; wonderful. Expect plenty of “bro” and “dude” utterances from this f---. It was not a pleasant experience watching a non-frightening piece of crap you don't buy for one second with loathsome piles of crap.

Then, there's things like an ending that totally seems tacked on at the last minute and doesn't do anything to improve matters. Oh, and Ryan films himself and others committing felonies, just because. Or, how people don't know knowledge of the 1993 play that they should have known long beforehand. LOL to them half-assing the attempt to make it look “real” by making it look like this footage is from the police department and the characters' first names are the actors' first name. I wouldn't have minded either some... gallows humor.

Point is, there are plenty of found footage horror out there worth seeing before you watch this, and there's also plenty of independent horror that far more deserved a wide release than this somehow got.