Writing about films is a funny thing. Reviewers hold movies to a higher standard than your average cinemagoer, partly because it's our job and partly because we have a passion for movies that goes beyond the norm. Personally, I try to find some good in every film. I look for positives rather faults but every now and then a film comes along that is so truly bad there is nothing good I can say about it. The Gallows is one such film.
Using the now tired 'found footage' style to tell it's story, the movie follows a group of high school stereotypes that decide to stage a play 20 years after a student died on stage during the same production. For the next 80-odd minutes this group of students run around darkened school corridors waiting to be picked off one by one.
Lacking anything close to an inventive idea or originality, the film is tedious, poorly cobbled together and perhaps worst of all, boring. All of the jumps are signposted a mile off, and after spending only moments with the group, you'll be left entirely nonplussed about their fate. Shot on a handheld camera and smartphones, the movie tries a few gimmicks to add to the urgency of the situation, like flashing "low battery" warnings across the screen from time to time but they can't distract from how terrible the movie is.
Writers and directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing have cobbled together a lazy attempt to cash in on audiences love of being scared and accomplish nothing only to dissuade people from ever forking out their money for a 'found footage' horror again. Not only that they have managed the feat of making a movie that is less then an hour and a half feel over-long.
The Gallows represents everything that is wrong with horror movies. Opting for cliches and cheap scares over anything resembling a sense of fun or intelligent narrative, it won't even appeal to those who love going along to a cinema to be scared. A truly awful movie and contender for worst of the year so far.
