The Gallows Review

The Gallows is a horror film which comes directed by both Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing who also both worked on the script. The film stars Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Cassidy Gifford and Travis Cluff. The Gallows tells the story of a group of high school students, who are participating in a school play which hasn’t been performed for 20 year’s, due to an accident which caused the death of a student when it was first performed. But what could go wrong a second time?

The Gallows Trailer

The Gallows Review

The Gallows was filmed almost entirely with the actors holding the camera and running around with it in their hand so we get to see ‘what they see’, when something scary happens. Everything shakes so much when a movie is filmed in this way and many people don’t really enjoy watching that happen. I don’t mind it too much, but I started to wonder why the characters would actually be carrying these cameras around, especially when most people have them in their phones these days. But alas, it is what it is.

The Gallows is filled with a bunch of unknown actors who aren’t easily recognisable, although they do enough to keep things going in the film. Cassidy Gifford to me seemed like the stand out star in this film and had by far the most convincing performance. However the rest of the cast didn’t seem that great and for the most part, were just yelling as loud as they could the whole time.

The plot in The Gallows is a bit of a downer, we know from the beginning that things are going to go wrong and it’s going to be something to do with the play, due to someone dying when it was first performed. When the kids sneak into the school late at night and the doors are locked by someone unknown, leaving them trapped inside the building, it’s easy to see that bad things will occur. This isn’t the problem with the story though, the problem is that the main villain doesn’t appear to have a clear motivation for doing the bad things that he does to these people. Characters as well, are strangely written and don’t seem like real people to me. The main character (Ryan Shoos) who is also the one who is holding the camera for most of the film is incredibly annoying. It’s like they made a character with the only purpose being, that you want to hat, but for little more purpose other than to be disliked by the audience.

The film does have some good points though, as a horror film it does have some great jump scares. It had much better jump scares when compared to the recently released Poltergeist film, which seemed to be lacking when it came down to that department. Characters may not have been great, but the scares were there and that may be all that people are looking for out of The Gallows.

Overall this is a film with only a few things going for it. Either you go in and see this so you can get scared quite a few times and you will get some great jump scares. Or you save yourself from the poorly written characters as well as an incredibly draining and mundane story. I would suggest that instead of The Gallows you consider watching something like Self/Less this weekend, or if you really must see this, at least try find some discount tickets for your screening.