Movie Review #280: "The Gallows" (2015)

Movie: "The Gallows"
Ticket Price: $12.50
Director: Travis Cluff & Chris Lofing
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 21 minutes

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In 1993, a student named Charlie, acting in the school play titled "The Gallows," dies when a prop functions.  Now, 20 years later, the same school is putting on the play again and another student actor named Reese (Reese Mishler) is filling the the role Charlie played decades before. He is having trouble learning his lines so his delinquent best friend Ryan (Ryan Shoos) suggests they break into the school and destroy the set before opening night. Once in the school they become trapped and strange things start to happen as they are seemingly attacked by Charlie from beyond the grave. 

Rated R for "disturbing violent content and terror"? Where?!

When will Hollywood be done with these terrible, awful, abhorrent, inconceivably bad found footage horror films? Our guess is likely never since they are so cheap to make and are almost guaranteed to make their money back, but we, for two, are sick-and-fuckin'-tired of them. "The Gallows" is a misery to sit through from start to finish. It runs through all the found-footage horror cliches: shaky camera work, numerous shots of feet and the floor, nonsensical, constant filming of everything and anything even though the kids are committing crimes like trespassing, breaking and entering, and destruction of government property, long durations of silence and then a HUGE LOUD NOISE and jump scare! Wow! No one would have thought!! EXCEPT FOR LITERALLY EVERYONE. The only positive note about this movie turns out to not even be a positive feature, and that's it's short run time, 81 minutes. Unluckily for us audience members, this movie is so damn slow, it feels as long as "Titanic," and it's so boring, we found ourselves wanting an excuse to leave the theater to check a clock after only 10 minutes of the film. For no reason whatsoever, "The Gallows" has an R rating. Honestly, we cannot imagine why. Filmmakers Cluff and Lofing could have cut one scene and would have gotten away with a PG-13 rating. This would have fit in with their masterfully misleading marketing scheme, featuring a viral video/game/something stupid "all the cool kids" were doing. There is hardly any bad language, no gore what so ever, no nudity, and it's just not scary to boot. By comparison, "Something's Gotta Give" has a FULL FRONTAL nude scene of Diane Keaton and is rated PG-13. WHAT? We have heard the word "shit" being uttered in PG movies! We've seen TV-Y7 "Goosebumps" episodes creepier than this steaming pile of dog crap!! Nobody in the film can act worth a damn, and if they can, they certainly don't show it here. The characters in this film are disgraceful human beings and wastes of precious oxygen before they start trashing their school. Every single solitary thing about this film is predictable, except for its "twist" ending, which relies on an overabundance of luck and stars aligning to pull off in the first place. It is such a piss poor excuse for a surprise we found ourselves angry about it because it's one of those stupid endings you'll probably never see coming, not because it's clever, but because it's so far out of left field to the rest of the story that it just doesn't make sense. Literally everything related to and in this film is contrived and poorly written. There is no real mood, no creepy ambiance, no scares at all, and nothing of substance for that matter! There is no originality here, not one lick of being different. Like we said, all this film has is jump scares, and even those are predictable down to the second.

Do yourself a favor and please don't waste your money on this, don't waste your time on this, and this goes doubly for Netflix and DVD viewings. It doesn't matter, just don't see it. This is absolutely, definitely, without a doubt one of the worst movies, if not the worst of the year. Bela Lugosi, the king of both awesome horror movies and epically bad career decisions, would be rolling over in his goddamn grave.

My Rating: 1/10
BigJ's Rating: 1/10
IMDB's Rating: 4.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 15%
Do we recommend this movie: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!