The Gallows
Directed by: Chris Lofing & Travis Cluff
Written by: Chris Lofing & Travis Cluff
Starring: Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Cassidy Gifford
Horror/Thriller - 81 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 9 July 2015
Written by: Chris Lofing & Travis Cluff
Starring: Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Cassidy Gifford
Horror/Thriller - 81 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 9 July 2015
I thought we had finally gotten rid of found footage movies. Starting as a quirky experiment with The Blair Witch Project (1999), found footage has run its course. There is nowhere else to take it and The Gallows certainly doesn’t take the shtick anywhere new. Cloverfield (2008) took the gimmick to a dizzying extreme, the Paranormal Activity franchise mostly left the camera on a friendly tripod, Chronicle (2012) was smart enough to have telekinetics zip and zoom the camera around, and now The Gallows hopefully puts the final nail in the found footage coffin. One may criticize The Gallows on so many filmmaking aspects, but the awful cinematography full of cheap tricks even surpasses the audience’s loathing for the characters.
Screenwriters know better. We have to identify with our main character. Even if he or she is an anti-hero, a villain, or just plain inexplicable, we must connect. The main character in The Gallows is Ryan (Ryan Shoos) and he is a straight up, through and through, jackass. Ryan provides most of the hand-held camera work because, well, it’s his camera. He films school drama club rehearsals yet injects an unceasing commentary over the action full of insults, vitriol, and pure teenaged stupidity. I was praying for Ryan’s death by any means at all way before anything supernatural showed up.
Screenwriters know better. We have to identify with our main character. Even if he or she is an anti-hero, a villain, or just plain inexplicable, we must connect. The main character in The Gallows is Ryan (Ryan Shoos) and he is a straight up, through and through, jackass. Ryan provides most of the hand-held camera work because, well, it’s his camera. He films school drama club rehearsals yet injects an unceasing commentary over the action full of insults, vitriol, and pure teenaged stupidity. I was praying for Ryan’s death by any means at all way before anything supernatural showed up.
Ryan is a football player and as we know from countless by the numbers high school films, you cannot be on the football team and in the drama club; your social standing will plummet and folks just won’t understand how you could possibly be interested in both things. Well, football player Reese (Reese Mishler) crosses the line. He is the lead in the school’s new play, The Gallows, and not only does he take heat for hanging out with all the drama nerds, he just might be the worst actor to come off the football field since O.J. Simpson.
This is not the first time the school has staged a production of The Gallows, a play featuring a hangman’s noose as the central set piece. 20 years ago, they performed the same play, but something went wrong, and a boy, Charlie, was hanged in the noose. What’s 20 years to a high school millennial? Ancient history. The Gallows is back, Reese is about to make a fool of himself, Ryan is annoying the hell out of everyone with his camera, and the play’s leading lady, Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown), just wants everything to go perfectly.
Let’s skip ahead to the horror, screams, scares, and death. Ryan, Reese, Pfeifer, and Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford), Ryan’s cheerleader girlfriend, find themselves locked inside the high school late at night with all the doors sealed and no electricity. It’s doesn’t matter why. Some…thing is making a lot of ruckus in the pitch black; chains rattling in the attic sort of thing. Events hit the next level when the noose starts to make appearances around throats and kids are hanging from the rafters.
Why found footage? Just like last year’s As Above, So Below, The Gallows could have been shot with standard cameras. Financed and produced independently outside the studio system, I understand co-directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing wanted to stretch money, but you can put an iPhone on a tripod. No, Cluff and Lofing used found footage for the shock factor. An iPhone has a limited field of view; therefore, when you are in a dark, confined area and all you have is a phone to peer through, whatever pops on screen will scare you, even if it isn’t the rope wielding paranormal maniac and it’s just your friend.
Jump scares have been and always will be the poor director’s crutch. You do not require loud shrieks and violin squeals every time someone opens a door. One of 2015’s best films so far, It Follows, is one of the most effective and most terrifying horror films I have ever seen, and I don’t remember a single jump scare. The best thing that could happen with Reese and the gang’s found footage is that someone accidentally deletes it.
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