MOVIE OF THE WEEK #1 (7/10/15): THE GALLOWS

"Dude – I wanted to play 'Hangman,' not face one!" Reese (Reese Mishler) stares at a noose on the stage of the play that might just end his life in a scene from Warner Bros./New Line Cinema's thriller THE GALLOWS. Credit: © 2015 Warner Bros. Entertainment.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:



KEY CAST MEMBERS: Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Price T. Morgan and Cassidy Gifford

WRITER(S): Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing

DIRECTOR(S): Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing

WEB SITE: http://thegallowsmovie.com/

60 SECOND PLOT SUMMARY (OR AS CLOSE TO THAT TIME AS ONE CAN MAKE IT): A found footage presentation, The Gallows begins by taking us to small town Nebraska circa 1993. It is here at Beatrice High School where we see a young man named Charlie in a high school play known as "The Gallows." We next then see a terrible accident that shocks everyone in attendance ...

Fast forward 20 years later to 2013 and Charlie's school is putting on "The Gallows" once again ... and the two main stars of the play are in different places leading up to tomorrow night's curtain drop. Whereas Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown) is looking forward to taking the stage, Reese (Reese Mishler) is trying to overcome his past football life to become a decent high school thespian. Reese isn't good, however, which is why his best friend Ryan (Ryan Shoos) and his cheerleader girlfriend Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford) convince him to break into the school late at night and wreck the stage so the show can't go on.

Once inside the school, however, Reese, Charlie and Cassidy not only learn the show must go on, it will go on – even if they may not be there to see it.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS FILM THE MOST? Easily scared people who do not pay attention to plot or acting performances as long as there is a general sense of creepiness about the film

WHO WON’T (OR SHOULDN'T) LIKE THIS MOVIE? Anyone who is tired of "horror" movies that rely on cheap "jump" moments as opposed to crafting true terror; those who are tired of "found footage" movies; people who hate it when movies have death scenes that don't matter when they occur and/or characters are killed off "just because;" people who pay attention to plot lines and hate it when there are obvious holes that distract from your enjoyment of the film; movie fans who hate a slow buildup with an unsatisfying pay off.

SO, IS IT GOOD, BAD OR ABSOLUTELY AWFUL? The Gallows is the not only the WORST movie I've seen thus far in 2015, it is the first one that literally made me wish everyone associated with it should be forced to apologize in any future interview that they do – and that's putting it mildly for a movie that should hang itself.

About 20 minutes into the movie, you'll have a clear sense of everything The Gallows is and everything it is not.

You wanna see something more entertaining and yet still less embarrassing than The Gallows? Click here. THAT's better than this movie. (The fact I had to do like Family Guy and Conway Twitty my own review should tell you something.) That's why as mentioned above, I will now explain everything The Gallows is and is not.

Things The Gallows is not
• Funny
• Scary
• Filled with interesting characters and snappy dialogue
• Well-directed
• Well-acted
• Original
• Long
(There are also no ethnic characters, but whether or not that actually bothers you in a movie this bad is up to you.)

Things The Gallows is
• Filled with annoying, aloof characters
• Potentially the final nail in the coffin of the "found footage" genre thanks to its reliance on bad camera angles, "convenient" camera battery power failures 
• Filled with story gaps and general not well enough explained phenomena and yet over-explained in many others
• Insulting to your intelligence

If you're still unclear, let me put it to you like this: The Gallows stinks. There's no impetus or reason to care about any of these characters as the film's terrible dialogue and the actors equally annoying portrayal of them will leave you fatigued. Once it's obvious what is going on, the film loses its last bit of intrigue save for "how will person x get killed?" You don't care how or why they die, you just want them to die. And soon. The revelation at the end of the film feels just as cheap in execution and impact as the first hour-plus of the film and only serves to make you further infuriated. 

Now, I could go on and on and on about how lame The Gallows is – and it would be deserved. (I'm also going to go on a little bit more.) It's a terrible movie. I repeat, IT'S A TERRIBLE MOVIE in just about every way a movie can be terrible. But why should I? Those of you who trust my judgment will understand I want you to not waste your money on a movie with no redeeming qualities. It fails to make you laugh, it fails to make you scared and most offensive yet, it's another one of those over-hyped Sinister style movies that could have been good if it actually decided to put some work in and use its premise, not have its actors behave like stereotypical teens and didn't rely on petty parlor tricks. 

Worst yet, the found footage angle is played out, not to mention it makes ZERO SENSE in the last 2-3 minutes given what happens. Just because Cloverfield and the (now embattled) Blair Witch Project did it well doesn't mean it works well for everyone. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the characters were not the worst archetypes of every teen (jock, nerd, bully, cheerleader, good girl) you could think of. But they are.

It's not just that the film is bad; it's that it is bad, lazy AND disappointing from start to finish. That's why The Gallows isn't worth the time or money it would even take to go to the theater to be disappointed.

OVERALL RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):