I’ll give The Gallows this: it’s short. Its running time is a short 81 minutes, the characters are shortsighted and the narrative is short-lived. Yet there’s something endlessly meandering about New Line‘s latest found-footage jump-scare fest, as writers/producers/directors Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff‘s film panders on at least 30 minutes too long. For as little as it seems, maybe they shouldn’ve gone one step farther and made it a short film.
Carbonated and canned to look and appear like every horror movie released to the masses today, this low-budget terror-seeker finds unsuspecting teenagers Reese Houser (Reese Mishler), Ryan Shoos (Ryan Shoos), Pfeifer Ross (Pfeifer Brown) and Cassidy Spilker (Cassidy Gifford) caught in the chambers of their haunted Beatrice High School the night before the premiere of their staged production of “The Gallows.” How did this happen? Something like this.
The play has a precarious history for the school, as it resulted in the accidental death of Charlie Grimille (Jesse Cross) back when the show first performed in 1993, and this performance is meant to honor its twenty anniversary (the movie was initially set to be released in 2012). Ex-footballer, Reese, is in the role Charlie played back in the day, while theater geek Pfeifer plays his fair maiden. The latter performs the part well, but the male lead doesn’t quite have the chops to pull it off. Production videographer Ryan — a jock who could care less about the play so long as he gets his class credit — devises a plan between his acting friend and his cheerleader girlfriend Cassidy to get out of their troubles.
Late that night, they gang together to sneak into the school through a broken door to destroy the set, therein dissolving the responsibilities the guys have in the play. It also allows Reese to serve as a crying shoulder for his acting partner, whom he hosts a major crush on. During their activities, Pfeifer gets indirectly involved in their breaking-and-entering antics, and all three are unwilling targets for Charlie’s spirit, one that locks them inside their public school and leads them into the worst night of their lives.
A bottle movie of sorts, this primarily one-location film hosts a youthful sincerity that would be charming were it not so repetitively, nauseatingly cliché. Every character feels like a template of those we’ve seen all-so-many times before — be it the goodhearted gentlemen (Reese), obnoxious friend (Ryan), dumb blonde (Cassidy) or resourceful-yet-involuntary outsider (Pfeifer). Every horror beat is enunciated to a fault by loud noises and lingering shots of hallways. Every action, be it comedic or horror-related, is too written and forced to feel authentic. Worst of all, the found-footage gimmick is half-heartedly introduced, then indirectly used throughout without there being any rhyme or reason whatsoever.
Even the mythos introduced later on is curiously sluggish. The entire mechanism of the film appears like a showcase for Lofing and Cluff’s talents (the former also edits the movie), rather than an earnest attempt to gain scares. On that level, The Gallows has some interesting color grading as it persists, not to mention some fine practical effects here-and-there. But it appears all-too-late, tired and timid in its execution before it’s even out of the gate.
It’s unfortunately yet another stale horror effort, with nothing to say or to explore beyond stereotypes and old-hat tricks. What possibly could and should have been a 20-minute film-school exercise is hyper-extended into a less-than-90-minutes feature, one too reductive and passive aggressive to earn any tension or momentum in conjunction with its flat characters. Despite some fine attempts at atmosphere, the filmmakers opt to use the same camera tricks and techniques with each scene, making every one more boring than the rest.
