The Gallows Review

Similar to the experience of stumbling through a pitch black funhouse until a regional actor shouts at you, The Gallows is intent on replicating that atmosphere down to its narrative twists and turns. A neat new supernatural slasher named Charlie, his urban legend-like lore and the naturally eerie empty halls of a high school are repeatedly squandered by the found footage film’s refusal of more classical anticipation and dread. That old battle between suspense and surprise wages on as The Gallows proves the very example of a film disappointing because of its potential.

In the high school of The Gallows, cliques are still clearly defined. Jocks and theater geeks are at odds, and we’re introduced to this clash via Ryan (Ryan Shoos), one football player of many required to take part in the school play. Ryan’s role is that of videographer and it’s his voice unfortunately running throughout most of The Gallows. A scheming bully, Ryan opens the movie shit-talking both the play—a revival of a tragic production at the high school 20 years prior—and his best friend’s efforts in it. Said best friend is Reese (Reese Mishler), another athlete whose earnest interest in the production stems from a lack of it in football and a crush on mini thespian Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown).

Reese is nervous, both about his star turn and his paramour, and so is easily manipulated by Ryan to break in to the school at night and sabotage the set. The Gallows, being a roughly 80 minute found footage film gets to the spooky B&E with haste, but not before an extended look at Ryan’s dedication to being the most obnoxious human being in horror this side of Franklin wheezing his way through Texas Chain Saw. Ryan is a baffling pest. It’s difficult to understand why anyone tolerates him, let alone a best friend and girlfriend (Cassidy Spilker), or how he could muster the balls to bully a theater devotee when my dude is walking around the movie with a fanny pack on.

Once inside the high school at witching hour, Reese, Ryan, Cassidy (and eventually Pfeiffer, too) find themselves trapped inside with the malevolent Charlie. A long-dead student, Charlie was accidentally hanged for real on stage One Fateful Night in the early 90s. He now stalks the halls in a hangman costume, wrapping a tight noose around invader’s necks. Charlie’s story is a sad, eerie one, giving his physical presence the promise of true creeps. The best sequence in the film, which you’ve already seen, sees him slowly emerge from the shadows behind a broken down Cassidy, awash in red emergency glow (a warning she can’t heed). It’s one of the rare occasions in which directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing employ and understand unsettling imagery, leaving the rest of the film victim to uninspired shocks and familiar use of found footage.

The story’s eventual twists work like these jolts, unfortunately rendering the admittedly warped development a bit cheap and ineffective. A shame, as the epilogue and final sequence is one of the aforementioned moments of true mood, arriving like Ryan’s comeuppance, far too late.