3/10

The formula of shot-on-video horror films becomes more and more predictable as the library for the genre grew beyond our wildest expectations a decade ago. ‘The Gallows’ tells a story twenty years after a deadly freak accident at a high school play. The play is still being run year after year, but there is something about this year’s play reminiscent of the one that sprung to disaster in 1993. When three students break into the school to destroy the play from going forward, they find themselves reaping the vengeance of someone with a deadly agenda. I have seen a lot of bottom feeders when it comes to shot-on-video, but this film might just take the expired and unhealthy cake. It’s scrambled in narrative progression, overflowing with plot holes, and at the center of it all is a lead cast so unlikeable that i found myself struggling to even get to interested. As predictable as those ingrediants are, no film in this subgenre would be complete with tiring and useless jump scares. I’ve explained this usage before and how jump scares only work when they are being used to display something visually chilling. Once again, ‘The Gallows’ is another film that abandons this logic, with characters jumping into frame with a big BOOM!!!! It’s cheap and only used to remind the audience that this is indeed a movie with an agenda. Because of that agenda, you can never suspend any kind of disbelief for the short and slowly paced 75 minutes that the movie captures. Again, there is no reason for this movie to be recorded by the cast. Who is their right mind needs to record every minute of their day?? Even in a cell phone era, it rolls during the times when the kids are up to trouble, and i would imagine that nobody would want that recorded if it ever fell into authorities hands. What the film does do well for this unoriginal premise, is that it uses two cameras at once to display a kind of cause-and-effect kind of scene. For instance, we see one character get seperated from his group, but our camera stays with the others. We hear sounds and bangs happening, but we never see it. This would’ve normally made the movie even more inexcusable, but the second camera clicks on after the scene to show what the audience missed while the noises were happening. It all plays out in real time and adds some creativity to this tired experiment. The best part of the film is the creepy setting of this high school that is greatly explored. Schools are a naturally creepy place, and this film highlights that fact with bone chilling settings being supported by exotic red lighting, as well as hidden doors behind corners that students never even see during their days. If the film’s mystery led to something greater, ‘The Gallows’ could get a solid pass without having to worry about it’s lack of tension or character backstory. Instead, the ending is far fetched even for the contradictor in all of us. It’s all pretty easy to put together if you are paying close attention, but it’s logic just doesn’t make sense when explaining why the trouble is starting up now, twenty-two years later. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the movie is that it will become the status quo for a lazy generation of studios that prefer to turn a profit for a film that is tightly budgeted to make back several times over that investment. With people still wanting to see this mess, films like these are going nowhere regardless of how much the audience dislikes them. I finish my review with a quote from an audience member sitting two rows behind me. “That movie was terrible and made no sense”. How true wise patron, but you paid for it monetarily and mentally.  There were times I envied Charlie for being hung in the film, and that’s not good for any movie.