The Gallows Review

The Gallows

Rating: Forgettable

Themes/Genres:    Thriller/Horror; Supernatural, Vengeful Spirit/Theater Ghost

Main Characters:   Ryan, Pfeifer, Reese, Cassidy, Charlie

Publisher/Director: Blumhouse; Chris Loffing/Travis Cluff

Overview:

Hype can be a dangerous thing sometimes.  More often than not, in fact, too much hype kills entertainment rather than helps it.  Sure, it gets that initial burst of sales, but as soon as people experience it, with a bar set way too high by imaginations and expectations running wild, it ends up falling flat.  There’s a rare occasion of it being exactly what people had hoped, and there’s even one or two cases of it turning out even better… but ‘The Gallows’ is not one of those cases.

Before its release, ‘The Gallows’ caught attention with trailers that showed very little and a marketing campaign that ended up going viral.  It had a ‘Cloverfield’ effect where, there was so little shown and so much was left to the imagination, that audiences were left wondering and trying to dig into it as much as possible, creating mystery-hype.  Leading up to the release, it was a huge deal…. But then it came out… and immediately dropped off the map.  It was never mentioned again and, I admit, I completely forgot it even existed until it popped up in the ‘cheap movies’ section at Walmart.

Part of the marketing was to draw back to popular 80's horrors, insinuating it would be another major horror star

So let’s find out how, even with viral trailers that were grabbing the internet by the balls, ‘The Gallows’ fell so hard off the map and out of everyone’s memories so quickly after release.

Summary:

The movie begins with high school stage play in 1993, which ends up going horribly wrong when the lead actor dies in a prop-gallow-related accident.  Years later, in 2013, the high school decides to try and resurrect the play, headed by actress Pfeifer.  However, when the easily-swayed and unsure male lead gets talked into breaking into the school at night with his two friends to sabotage the play, hoping to keep the play from happening at all, and running into their leading actress in the process, they soon find themselves trapped in the school and at the mercy of the ghost of the theater.

Plot:

• Coincidence-ridden, most of which lessen the effect of the story rather than help and are ultimately unnecessary
• Predictable, very basic 'vengeful ghost' story
• Dicks around too much in the beginning
• Doesn't explore backstory that it should have, could have benefited from more moments involving Reese's father
• The only good twist, in a story ridden with cliche 'what a twist!' moments, was the revelation about Pfeifer's involvement
• The final scene involving the police raid of the house was just drastically unnecessary

Once the story actually gets started, it stays relatively on-track with the basic story, but the beginning could honestly be cut out entirely and probably make for a better experience.  However, the story, itself, is just a bit too basic and way too predictable to make any sort of impact whatsoever.  Person dies in an accident, ghost is out for revenge, douchebag characters die, one girl lives.  The concept of a theater ghost, especially, is nothing new and the movie, itself, explores no new concepts or ideas, whatsoever.  The plot is full of horror movie tropes, the jump-scares are extremely predictable, the similarities between the past and present play are groan-worthy, and it all adds up to a really boring experience. 

The ending scene... that you could see coming from a mile away.  Obvious setup was obvious

Characters:

• They're all douchebags
• Almost every single character is an unrealistic stereotype of some kind
• Reese is the only even remotely likable character by even he's way too easily swayed to do stupid shit by shitty friends (the true horror of this movie: peer pressure)
• There was a whole lot of "I'm acting!" (i.e. really bad acting)
• Dialogue is clunky and extremely unnatural most of the time, Ryan and Cassidy are amazingly stupid, even for teenagers

Here we see King Douchebag, douching it up and just asking to get killed by Theater Ghost

Seriously, the characters are so unbelievably stupid or such unrealistic jackasses throughout the movie you’re just waiting for them to get killed off already.  Instead of feeling horror, like you’re supposed to in a horror movie, you just feel relief when they die.  The entire first section of the movie, instead of building up the backstory and subtly hinting at what’s to come, just spends way too long showing you how much of a dick Ryan is and wishing Reese would just get better friends.  You feel no connection to the characters whatsoever and thus, their struggle, panic, and anxieties get no emotional response from the viewer because you honestly just don’t care what happens to them.

Visuals/Cinematography:

• 'Found-footage' style really worked against it rather than for it
• Certain moments of non-chronological order editing just comes out weird
• Does at least show most of the action when it finally happens, instead of leaving you staring at a black screen or everything happening off-screen

An attention-drawing scene for a trailer... but was way too 'Blair Witch Project' in the movie, including annoying up-the-nose camera angles and one of the most 'I'm acting!' moments in the entire movie

There isn’t a whole lot you can say about found-footage movies when it comes to visuals.  Normally I love them and I feel like they’re just a fun way to shoot horror movies, but this is one of those cases where even I have to say, it would have been better as a normal movie rather than found footage.  On the one hand, it doesn’t leave you with several minutes of pure black screen like the original ‘Blair Witch Project’ and it doesn’t leave the best action entirely and unnecessarily off-screen like the ‘Paranormal Activity’ movies love doing, you get all the action, even if the editing comes off a bit weird.  But on the other hand, there was so much there that just wouldn’t have been filmed, even by an incredibly stupid teen, that it just feels unnatural to be in the found footage style.  A normal cinematic-style filming would have been much better in this case.

Final Thoughts:

While this movie was, overall, incredibly boring and I can see now why it was so quickly forgotten upon release, there is one thing that I would like to mention: the actual tactics behind filming the movie.  For those that simply saw it in theaters or bought the DVD and never really explored the Special Features section, there’s a commentary about the filming of the movie from the Directors, as there always is, but this particular one held a unique bit of information that, despite the movie, on its own, not panning out to much, there was an impressive amount of effort put in behind the scenes.

The directors went to great lengths to get as authentic a reaction as possible out of both their audiences and their actors, even going so far as to film on an actually haunted location and plan out certain scenes in a way that would get real scares from everyone on set.  Some of the best acting in the movie wasn’t acting at all, they legitimately scared the crap out of their actors, and they went to a lot of trouble to do it.   It’s effort that I have to commend, even if the movie can’t stand on its own, knowing what they went through to film it gives it its own credibility.

Ultimately, it’s not a terrible movie, but watching it, on its own, without knowing anything about the filming, it’s boring, it’s clichéd, and it’s forgettable.  But I’ve certainly seen worse.  Is it worth picking up?  Maybe for a couple bucks, just to watch the Special Features, but nothing I’d plan for an actual spooky-filled evening.  It’s not going on anyone’s Halloween Night movie list, that’s for sure.