The Gallows  (2015)    35/100

Rating :   35/100                                                                       81 Min        15

Buddies Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing both wrote and directed this and one hopes they had a good time in the process as it’s highly unlikely anyone else is going to whilst watching their final product – a handheld horror film that couldn’t be any less artful if it tried. All set in a high school where a school play, ‘The Gallows’, went tragically awry in the nineties and one of the performers ended up actually being hung. Seeming to forget this incident, the school decide to put on the same play again in the present day, and when four of the kids get stuck inside the building late at night, three of them having been intent on sabotaging the sets because they’re little shits, questions of supernatural evil and the spirit of the deceased haunting the school begin to arise …

It doesn’t bode well for a handheld film when the person mostly behind the camera is incredibly annoying, and here he is joined by the obligatory couple of girls with sweaty uplifted cleavages and scares no more original than a camera looking one way before turning around and back again to reveal something new in view of the lens – at one point the camera sits by itself at rest for a moment and then one of the main characters purposefully jumps in front of it to surprise the audience. That’s the level of entertainment you’re looking at here. The story and concept aren’t completely terrible but what they’ve done with it, simply put, is. Starring Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos and Cassidy Gifford as the central four that get mired in bad acting and screenwriting.

This song isn’t in the film, but I’ve had it in my head since watching it nonetheless. And now you can too ….

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