Movie Review: THE GALLOWS

Blumhouse has always been a studio that I have been wary on. I’m not the hugest fan of the Paranormal Activity franchise, with the exception of Paranormal Activity 3. The Purge films are ok for what they are but I guess the highest ranking films from the company would be Insidious and Sinister. Unless, you want to count Whiplash – which could be conceived as a psychological horror film. Regardless, I’m glad there is a studio doing what Blumhouse does.

The Gallows documents a group of teenagers who sneak into the school at night to sabotage a stage play of the same name that has a tragic past. As you could probably guess, the stage play has a noose in it and the tragedy would be a kid was accidentally killed during the production back in 1993. For some stupid reason, the school and the drama teacher allow a new production to be performed in 2013, the 20 year anniversary of that tragic night. Once the kids start trashing the set, they hear a couple of noises and try to get out of the auditorium. The doors are now locked and they cannot escape and we must watch all their Scooby-Doo-ish investigation through “found footage” via a nice HD camera and even a phone that has a Night Vision app (yes, this film thinks that the audience is that dumb).

Let’s cut to the chase. This film is horrid. Seriously, it is one of the worst films I have seen this year and maybe the worst mainstream horror film that I have seen in a long time. While I didn’t care for Paranormal Activity, I’ll fully admit that there were some creative setups. What Paranormal Activity did was make you scan the frame of the video for the minutia, little things that could be moving by a supernatural force. That is what made that film successful, it interacted, in a way, with the audience. The Gallows has none of that. Honestly, I wanted to walk out within the first 15 minutes of this film. We see the tragic event via a 1993 videotape in 4:3 format yet with static and wave manipulation that can be commonly found via After Effects or another mid-level editing suite (SERIOUSLY! FILMMAKERS, GO TO GOODWILL AND DUB THIS FOOTAGE TO MAKE IT LOOK “AUTHENTIC”, AUDIENCES ARE SMARTER THAN YOU THINK!). What’s worse is you almost get this voiceover commentary from some parents (Sorry, don’t know whose parents they were because my eye rolling started drowning out their annoying commentary) that overtly explains to the audience what is happening on stage and how one of the characters was a last minute replacement. Then, once the tragedy strikes, it awkwardly keeps filming. No camera drop, no turn away, just filming onward. If that wasn’t bad enough, you are cut to present day – complete with a “This footage is the property of the Whogivesafucktown Police Department” – to a annoying douchebag of a character that you immediately want to die. We stick with him for another 10 minutes before we meet the shy guy, who is really our main character.

All the characters in this film are useless and uninteresting. The scares are cheap and non-effective. Imagine someone who watched Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer and heard that by doing a horror found footage film was the way to get a movie made, so they copied a low-rent mystery, scattered clues to lead the kids along in the school (instead of focusing on GETTING THE FUCK OUT!) and you pretty much have The Gallows. All the horror cliches are in this film and they even act like they are breaking new ground.

That’s it. I’m done. This movie is garbage and not worth anyone’s time.

Also, side note – this was an advance screening that had general public occupying most of the movie. Everyone walked out of this film saying something like “Glad I didn’t waste my money on that” or “I’m going to tell my friends not to waste their time with this one”. I’m not alone.