The Gallows (2015)

Great Film overall

Good start, but then it gets ruined

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

If I could give this film a lower rating I would. This has got to be the most transparently predictable and dull film I have ever seen. The writing, the performances, the camera work, everything, is terrible.The writing is so stilted and obvious its as if the writers think the audience is a bunch of idiots. Lines that are set-ups for future events are so blatant, and the writing overall is just irritating, especially anything coming out of the mouth of the cameraman, who is possibly the worst character in any film I have seen.The acting is over the top and makes the film feel stupid, which makes the already bad plot seem even worse. To tell you the plot would be a waste of time as it has no sort of worth to anyone in any way. It's that bad.Finally, the fact this is a found footage style film adds nothing to the plot, and if anything only seems to be done to keep the budget down. Again, the nonsensical plot makes it seem even more idiotic. Found footage is meant to add a layer of realism to a story and so when the story, dialogue and characters seem unnatural, it completely goes against the purpose of the filming style. It's literally just so that they can save some money and make a ton more profit than they otherwise would off this piece of crap.Overall, don't watch it, it's bad. If you want to get a better idea of how painful the film is, I suggest watching the first 5 minutes and listening closely to that stilted dialogue. It's the same throughout the entire movie, and it doesn't get better. It's awful. Don't watch.

The Gallows is a found footage horror movie, released in 2015. From directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing, this is a school based found footage movie, focusing on the brutal accident of previous student, Charlie Grimille. Twenty years after a school production of "The Gallows" leads to the death of Charlie Grimille after a props malfunction, the high school drama club decides to remake the stage production to honour the anniversary of the tragedy. However, they soon find that some things are much, much better left alone. I admit, this movie started off extremely slowly. I wasn't that interested in what was happening, other than the very first scene that showed the accident with Charlie, but as with most found footage horror movies, I had to see it through. The beginning of most found footage horror movies are incredibly slow, something that I really wish had not become a trope of the genre, and this is definitely no different. I was very tempted to turn it off. It took around half an hour, forty minutes for this to finally kick in, and when it did, oh boy.I'm not weak to horror. I can gladly sit and watch what are considered the scariest horror movies, and come out of them bored and not scared at all but this movie, damn. The Gallows is an expert at building up the atmosphere, and making the goosebumps appear on your skin. It's absolutely brilliant at bringing up a situation that you know is going to happen, you know this one moment is going to happen, but when it does happen – you're creeped out and a little scared. The atmospheric build up is absolutely spectacular, and I don't think a found footage horror movie has ever made me feel so uneasy before – especially with the numerous night vision scenes. Of course, the plot is pretty basic; four teenagers trapped in their school, and a dead student is haunting them and killing them off one by one. It's not a terribly original entry into the found footage genre, but the acting is what really sets this apart from the others, in my opinion. I find in a lot of found footage horror movies, the actors don't seem to always put on a good show, they seem to be lacking. Maybe they know it's a bit of bad movie and they just don't really care, but in The Gallows, all four of the main actors did a brilliant job. You could feel their fear, you could connect in with their emotions, and really understand where they were coming from. Especially with actor Reese Mishler, who played the lead male, Reese Houser. There were pure moments with him where I was so scared I couldn't look away from the screen, I could not move, purely from him acting as scared as he was.This got a lot of bad criticism for a movie, and I'm beginning to feel this is more of a distaste for the found footage genre more than anything, and I think this movie definitely deserves a watch. It was atmospheric, it was scary, things were clear, and it wasn't just another ghost on a rampage. Not original in it's entry, but rather original within it's plot as a movie, and I would definitely give this another watch. This is one of those rare gems of the found footage genre, and I'm definitely glad that I gave this a chance.

Literally JUST signed up to write a bad review for this one. If you want to see people running around in the dark and asking yourself 'why are they filming?!' this is definitely the movie for you. If you want to watch something better then this, just stare at the blank TV screen in your living room and it will be worth the wild. Thank you IMDb for telling me to write minimum of 10 lines of text in order to be able to be posted. Now I can trash this trashy movie about a group of stupid teenagers with a douche bag as the main character. Yes, another one of those.... Yay. We all have to thank the blonde for getting choked and then asking what happened? And the best part of this movie, and this part isn't sarcastic, is the end when the policemen walk into the house... filming and you can finally see the beautiful costume that probably costed as much as the film made.... $4.00 And now, I'm done. Thank you world for making another crappy "found footage" movie.... Yeah, "found"....

For years mankind has wondered about the possibility of there being someone/something out there in the great expands of the universe. Another intelligent life-force that may one day visit our lowly shores to learn about us curious beings and hopefully not blast us away with advanced technology or decide to take us away for some good old fashioned experimentation. If indeed one day we find ourselves in communication with a great race equal to our technological advancements let us all hope that these visitors do not find a copy of found footage horror film The Gallows, as their judgements upon mankind may be non-recoverable.A film so daft and downright dumb it's hard to fathom how it came into existence in the first place, The Gallows as directed by duo Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing (seriously it took two people to make this turkey!) is the type of film where you can feel your brain cells disappearing with each passing minute as annoying characters make unintelligible decision upon unintelligible decision and seemingly solvable solutions are ignored in the sake of more shakily handled "scares".A new low in the past it's use by date genre of found footage horrors, The Gallows plunges to previously unseen depths of narrative drivel to tell the story of painfully badly acted teenage brats breaking into their seemingly medievally secured school to wreck the set to an upcoming play only to be haunted by an ominous fiend who locks them in the school facility (really there's not a single window that could be smashed to break out of?) to wreck all manner of nasties on them.Watch on in disbelief as these unlikeable creations knock pot plants down, "dismantle" sets by taking a piece of wood out of a stage setting and generally fail at their objective only to be bettered or worsened by the fact that their school break in just happens to be in a school that seemingly has forgone any type of security, whether it be guards, cameras, motion detectors or even the locking of a door that would take 1 minute to fix, this school does not care who wonders its grounds come closing time! It's almost as if The Gallows creators Cluff and Lofing decided they were onto narrative gold or perhaps just an easy paycheck and set forth on making their film no matter if anything actually made sense or if logic was totally bypassed, it's almost akin to a home movie production, just far less funny or enjoyable.The Gallows is neither scary or original and nothing about the film feels even remotely believable, even in a genre that's not supposed to be clothed in reality.Taking place around some seriously lax logic and scenarios, The Gallows gets its rating purely based around the fact it's something that needs to be seen to be believed as for those that thought modern day horrors and found footage films had reached their lowest ebbs, The Gallows is here to show us all that the bar has been set even lower.In other words, all copies of this film should be locked away or simply destroyed quick smart…… before the intergalactic visitors arrive! ½ an unsecured school facility out of 5