Review: THE GALLOWS, Screaming, Crying, And Dying, Yet Still Recording
The latest offering from the Blumhouse Productions factory, The Gallows comes up with two new angles to explore otherwise familiar found-footage territory.
First, a good portion of the footage is presented from the point of view of a very unlikable young man named Ryan (Ryan Shoos), who has been placed in charge of recording highlights from a high school theater production. He makes bad jokes about the play and mocks the "theater geeks" who are involved, including his apparent best friend Reese (Reese Houser). As the footage reveals, Reese is not a very good actor but has been cast opposite a fetching young woman called Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown), which is meant to explain his motivation for participating.
When Ryan discovers a broken exterior door to the school auditorium, he invites his girlfriend Cassidy (Cassidy Spilker) and Reese to join him in sneaking into the building and vandalizing the production, thus preventing the play from making its premiere the next night and freeing Reese from embarrassing himself in front of the entire school. Reese acquiesces, and the trio of vandals proceed to smash things up until Pfeifer unexpectedly shows up. That should put a stop to things, but then Something Strange happens, leading to screaming and crying and, eventually, something more painful.
The recording continues throughout, but here is the second new angle: the kids need the light from the camera to see what's happening and try to escape. Admittedly, it's not an entirely new angle, but at least it makes sense within the realm of the movie, and the operator occasionally puts the camera down for a few moments, allowing for a break in the walking and running and looking all around.
Putting aside the camera technique, The Gallows makes itself nearly unwatchable for the large portion of the story that's told from the point of view of the nasty and not very funny Ryan. Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing wrote and directed, and perhaps their intention was to make Ryan compelling in his anti-heroic behavior, but mostly he's just a jerk; I can't understand why anyone would want to spend more than five minutes in his presence.
Yet Ryan is a good-looking fellow, so perhaps that's why he has a girlfriend and a loyal friend. Or maybe he's a bully who intimidates other people, including those who are supposedly "close" to him. Whatever the case, the argument in favor of putting him at the center of much of the movie is weak and not persuasively made.
Without credible characters, then, The Gallows becomes a horror movie that's dependent upon creating suspense and building tension, and it doesn't do either very well. It's not a complete mess. There are definitely moments that suggest Cluff and Lofing have the instincts to do something fresh and original, but this isn't it.
The film is now playing wide in theaters across North America.
