One movie trope that always gets on my nerves is the way
that phones in movies ring as long as they need to, which is usually a totally
unrealistic amount of time. I always
find myself thinking about the person on the other end of the line. Why would they possibly be letting the phone
ring so long? Especially in a situation
where a character is in some kind of trouble and they are trying to get to an
incredibly long ringing phone and the person that is calling has no idea they
are in trouble, that makes no sense. The
reason I brought that up is because I honestly believe this movie has the
longest ringing phone in movie history.
The
Gallows opens up by showing a school play from 1993 that went horribly
wrong. In a hanging scene, a prop
malfunction caused a kid to actually be hanged on stage. Now, all these years later, the school has
decided to do the play again. A couple
of jocks who do not want the play to be carried out decide to sneak into the
school one night and destroy the set. That
is when the terror begins. Oh, and a
ghost shows up too.
In a
way, I think found footage films get a bad rap.
I complain about them as much as anyone, but the truth is I have seen
more good ones than bad ones. I
understand that studios use them as a cheap and lazy way to make a lot of
money, but some have used the found footage gimmick very well. The Gallows is not one of those. At one point, the main character actually
says the line, “Why would you even want to film this?” That is ironic because that’s exactly how I
felt throughout a good portion of the film.
Anytime the guy is not consciously filming for whatever reason the
camera just coincidentally happens to be in just the right place to get
everything exactly in frame. Also, at
one point they introduce cell phone cameras into the mix, which by the very
concept of found footage makes no sense.
This, along with the strange way they screwed the timeline up led to
quite a bit of confusion in the second act.
The
first act of the movie relies heavily on humor to make it work. Unfortunately, it is one of the worst
attempts at humor I have ever seen in a movie.
The guy holding the camera, and thus making most of the jokes, is the
most annoying character I can possibly imagine.
Also in the first act, we are introduced to just about every clichéd high
school character there is, from geeky drama kids to meat head jocks. The movie did not get off to a good
start.
The
second act is all about the jump scares. I always felt like I was either watching a jump
scare or anticipating the next one. If
you hate cheap jump scares like I do, this movie is NOT for you. One of
the jump scares in particular is so badly executed that you can’t even tell
what happened. There is just a really
loud noise and a bunch of frantic screaming.
That’s not scary. That is
annoying. There is one good scene in the
movie. Just one, and it is in the
trailer…..and on the poster.
The characters
in this movie are non-existent. They are
just random people running around screaming with a camera and nothing that even
closely resembles a personality. The
acting is bad, especially Reese Mishler, who plays the main character. Everybody in the movie over-acts all the time.
The
ending of the movie is stupid. REALLY
stupid. There is a twist at the end that
is even more stupid. The ending makes
the whole movie make even less sense than it made in the first place, which is
not much.
The
Gallows insulted my intelligence. I was
not in a good mood after sitting through this ridiculous mess of a found
footage film. Please don’t go see this. Please do not give these people any more money
for making garbage like this. The Movie
Man gives it 1 out of 5 stars.
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Kinda what I was thinkin.
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