Anyway, The Gallows is yet another found footage horror movie that seems to be overtaking Hollywood these days. I mean I get it, their unbelievably cheap to make and you're almost guaranteed to make a profit; but just a little bit of creativity would be appreciated every now and then. Damn you Blair Witch Project!
Well the first hour of Gallows starts off just like your average run of the mill found footage horror film normally would. For whatever random reason this jock decides to carry a camera around with him everywhere he goes just so he can film every second of his and his friend's mundane lives. He presumably does this to help out his best friend Reese, who recently decided to quit the football team and join the drama club.
The problem with that is, he is awful at acting! The play is about to be open to the public the next day and Reese barely knows any of his lines. Well as it turns out, the real reason he decided to be a part of this play was to get closer to the main drama nerd Pfeifer. Pfeifer is the overzealous lead actress in he school's latest attempt to put on the play The Gallows.
The school attempted to perform this play back in 1993 but a horrific accident on stage to one of the play's main actors Charlie put an abrupt end to that; and it wasn't until this latest attempt that anyone even dared mentioning the play or Charlie's name.
Well Reese's best friend Ryan and his girlfriend Cassidy decide to help Reese out by attempting to tear down the stage the night before so that the school has no choice but to cancel the show. But wouldn't you know it, the second they attempt to do so, all sorts of weird things start happening and they wonder if breaking into the school was such a good idea after all. The rest I will leave for you to experience on your own.
But as I mentioned earlier, the first hour is full of your typical long still shots with the camera until something pops out and scares you nonsense; and most of the characters in the movie are these completely unlikeable jerks who you just can't wait to see get killed. But it's the last 20 minutes of the movie that actually redeems this film. For once they actually do something a little original and they decide to care about writing an actual story.
There are a few creepy scenes that will stick with me for quite some time and it's not just due to the fact that when I came home from seeing this film, I heard some of the same weird and disturbing sounds coming from my neighbor's apartment that were in the movie.
And while I did bash the first hour of the film, I will give them some credit for using the limitations of technology to aid in the overall eerie mood of the film. You had scenes where the camera inconveniently went into power saving mode and shut off their only available light while they were stumbling around the school, and they also had the all too believable scenario of their cell phones dying due to overuse throughout the day.
I am not sure why critics completely panned this movie when they give a snoozefest like It Follows a decent rating. Maybe they're just old and out of touch, or it could be that the actors in this film are so bad that they couldn't even remember their character's names. Every main character in this film has the same first name as the actor portraying them. I think that's the first time I've ever heard of such a thing.
Anyway, in the end, I ended up really enjoying this film and I give it a rating of FRESH!
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