The Horror Show
The Gallows
by Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing
Ahh, can you smell that? Yes, yes… the smell of another found footage film has graced us with its presence… but this time, much like last year’s As Above So Below, with an R rating. Typically when a horror movie hits theaters and gets the type of promotion that The Gallows got, one would assume that the Summer Horror Hit has been found! I mean, c’mon, the trailer even sported a creepy cover of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.
I wanted to like this movie, in fact, I wanted to love this movie. I talked about it a lot and how cool I thought it was going to be, I told other people they should go see it before I did because I was confident that this movie was going to be rad AF. And then I watched it. And I couldn’t speak because my foot was filling up my mouth.
If you read my reviews regularly (which you should) then you now have my permission to scream at me. Because yes, I often times get waaaay too excited about a movie trailer only to be disappointed later. But anyway, enough about me and how I don’t seem to learn from my mistakes, let’s talk about The Gallows.
The film begins with some nineties footage of a school play and I really started off digging it. I remember my parents filming their fair share of plays and musical performances and so on and so forth back when I was in school, so it was majorly nostalgic. We bear witness to a tragic accident in which the lead in the play, Charlie, is somehow hanged and actually killed during the final act. Flash forward to twenty years later and the high school has decided that they’re going to once again bring the play, The Gallows, to the stage. Of course, nobody realizes that this is a bad idea until much later, and we’re now subjected to the most annoying person who could ever be behind the camera, high school jock, Ryan.
Ryan is just soooo funny when he makes fun of his friend Reese who wants drama geek, Pfeifer’s attention. And Ryan’s girlfriend, Cassidy, is equally annoying, but slightly more tolerable. I’ll waste no time in delving into any relevant information about these characters because, oh, we don’t get any.
When Reese catches a bout of stage fright, Ryan has the bright idea of breaking into the school at night and trashing the set of The Gallows so that Reese doesn’t have to star in the play. You know, instead of like, letting the understudy do his job.
After trashing the set, the trio of hooligans hear some strange noises and are afraid of getting caught so they attempt to hide. But they don’t get very far because they run into Pfeifer, who was conveniently driving by and decided to stop and break into the school after seeing Reese’s car parked there instead of, I don’t know, maybe texting him?
After some random high school drama occurs, we finally get to see some action. There’s definitely a lot of supernatural stuff going on and don’t get me wrong, when the movie finally got going, my interest definitely piqued. The antagonist in The Gallows was creepy as all hell and the final plot twist at the end made me have a love/hate/love relationship with it… so I can’t 100% hate this movie. But, The Gallows could have served its purpose as a short film on YouTube and the story could have been told in thirty minutes or less.
There were a lot of close-ups of girls crying and guys trying to look macho. The jump scares were sparse, which I appreciated, because I feel like that would have made this movie even more insufferable. But I will go back to that twist at the end…
As much as I thought it was cool, I really had to wonder what in the world really happened there. I’m not going to spoil anything but really, if somebody watches this movie and kinda just goes “huh, is that so…” at the end, please come talk to me, because I’d love to just shoot the shit about it and discuss how, ultimately, three days later I decided I hated it.
All in all, save your money. If you’ve seen any found footage horror film in the last six years, chances are you know exactly what to expect from The Gallows (oh, and you can find less annoying characters in something else too). If you’re looking to spend your money on something current in the theaters, may I recommend Straight Outta Compton, which is neither horror nor metal, but seriously way more worth your money.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.