20 years after a horrific accident during a small town school play, students at the school resurrect the failed show in a misguided attempt to honor the anniversary of the tragedy - but soon discover that some things are better left alone
Directors:Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing
Writers:Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing
Stars:Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos
Storyline
Twenty years after an accident during a small town high school play results in death, students at the school resurrect the failed stage production in a misguided attempt to honor the anniversary of the tragedy - but ultimately find out that some things are better left alone.movie Reviews
Surprisingly Intense
Unsurprisingly, this
movie has gotten a lot of hate around the internet. With a 4.7 on IMDb
based on only 164 ratings, a 16% on rotten tomatoes and a 31 on
metacritic, you'd expect this to be a complete disaster. Fortunately,
The Gallows is a surprisingly intense and effective little found footage
flick that has a few good scares up its sleeve. The Gallows is a
supernatural found footage film about a group of teenagers who break
into their school the night before a play, appropriately titled "The
Gallows", so that the show can't go on. However, 20 years earlier, a
freak accident happened during the same play that resulted in the death
of Charlie Grimelle, the star of the show. For the most part, this film
is rather tight and controlled. Clocking in at a criminally short 81
minutes, this does allow the movie to move at a pretty brisk pace, but a
few scenes do feel rather rushed. Some of the scares do fall flat
because of this and go for a jump scare that would have been much more
effective if there wasn't a "big whoosh sound". Other than those few
scenes, there are quite a few well- timed jump scares and a lot of
incredibly intense and scary scenes that, luckily, don't end on a
dramatic jump scare. Watching the four characters roaming the dark,
empty corridors of their school is rather unnerving, especially when
they find hidden rooms underneath the school. The sound also makes this
movie very atmospheric and unsettling. The Gallows isn't without its
glaring problems. This movie definitely won't win any awards in the
originality department, and the acting (something I usually never
mention) is largely uneven from a couple of the cast members, but the
worst thing about The Gallows is the atrocity that is the ending. I
don't want to spoil anything, but the big plot twist at the end was
insanely predictable and cheesy. It was almost as if the filmmakers
couldn't come up with a decent way to end the movie, so they just
wrapped it up with some lame plot twist that makes no sense at all. That
might have been why this was only 81 minutes. The worst thing about the
ending is that it actually created more questions than it answered,
which really frustrated my friend and me. Despite the absolutely awful
ending, The Gallows does not deserve the scorn it's been getting on the
Internet. It's a very intense and sometimes scary movie, and it's
definitely a movie you'll want to watch in the theater.
