The Gallows (2015)

Rated R. Running time: 1 hour 22 min.

Our content ratings (1-10); Violence 6; Language 4; Sex/Nudity 2.

Our star rating (1-5): 0

 It was not worth the effort to search for a relevant Scripture or create a set of questions for this thing.

If there is a crummier, more disappointing movie now playing than this piece of junk, then I haven’t seen it yet. A “found video” horror flick, it scarcely has 15 minutes of in-focus shots, the images blurred, too dark, and careening all over the place. The theater should issue nausea pills to patrons foolish enough to pay to see this thing.

The clichéd plot concerns four high school students trying to prevent their school from staging a play, also called, The Gallows in which 20 years earlier the lead actor in a period drama had been accidentally hung. Ryan (Ryan Shoos), a football-playing student spouting a lot of nonsense and in charge of documenting the production of the play (hence the camcorder seemingly glued to his hand) leads three others in a break-in the night before the play is to open. With him are his girlfriend Cassidy (Cassidy Spilker), and friend Reese (Reese Mishler). The latter is the lead in the play, and he secretly admires the leading lady Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown).

Just why the school authorities would think it a good idea to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the death by hanging of the student actor is not explained, not how a jerk like Ryan could convince the two leads in the restaged version to joi him in sabotaging the play. When a series of supposedly scary things happen to the teens, viewers inclined to think about what has happened will still be in the dark as to how the masked ghost or whatever pulled off the mayhem.

During the course of the film’s 82 minutes we see as much of the actors’ feet as their faces, which might be just as well. Oh yes, there is a scare or two, though my main fear was that it would go on longer than it did.

The screening audience (which I watched almost as much as the wretched film) seemed divided, some genuinely scared (especially the couple of young folk right behind me), and others so disgusted that they called out jeering remarks that evoked laughter from many of us.

The film was produced by the same studio—Blum House Productions (perhaps it should be Bum House!)–that foisted Paranormal Activity, Sinister, and Insidious on a public all too willing to accept such fluff. Warner Brothers obviously picked up distribution rights because these other low-cost productions raked in huge profits. Consider the above as more of a warning than a review.