Wednesday Review: The Gallows

My first Wednesday, and my first Wednesday Review (wow, I'm creative with that title). Why Wednesday? Halfway between the other two reviews for the week, so why not? Since Wednesday Reviews will be films still in theaters I'll try to give less spoilers, and I won't break my neck trying to identify every actor. I've only seen these films once, and the wikipedia entries are likely incomplete, so I'd probably get some actors wrong otherwise..

I feel like the Found Footage genre is one of the most misused in cinema today. This is sad, because the style has so much potential. It's as if the filmmakers forget that we're supposed to be watching edited footage presented to us by someone interested in the events. This means anything boring or irrelevant should be edited out, and narration could be used to explain known events that weren't filmed and exposit the narrator's theories about unknown events. Anyone who's seen The Last Broadcast can tell you that making the editor a character works.

That said, however, The Gallows at least manages to deliver scares, and avoid the boredom of the Paranormal Activity series. It's actually something of an oddball for Blumhouse, which seems to make horror films exclusively about horrible things happening to people who were already severely depressed. That kind of melancholy acting can work some of the time in horror, but it was really starting to get old. In this film, however, most of the characters are varying shades of unlikeable, but they at least seem to be relatively happy teenagers before the evil arrives.

The film does have two things really going for it: the atmosphere, and the use of Nothing is Scarier. The film is about a group of High School students who break into their school in the middle of the night to wreck the set for a school play. The jock drafted as the play's lead doesn't want to do it, and hopes to get the whole thing canceled. However, over twenty years earlier another boy was killed in an accident during the same play, and the teens find themselves locked in and under attack by the student's hangman-hooded ghost.

The environment of a school after hours is creepy. It's an environment we all relate to, and without students and lights it's just looks wrong. The sense of “they shouldn't be here” is drilling into our brains through the entire movie. At the same time, the ghost isn't seen until near the end, but his actions are. Noises echo through the school, and objects move inexplicably. This is build-up done right.

While the ghost is seen, he's saved mostly for the end. I think the end hurts the film, however, as he goes from unseen to overused in the final twenty minutes or so, and is seen far too clearly. He was far scarier when he was cloaked partially in shadows, or not seen at all.

The final twist of the movie worked for me. It was specific enough to give us a final shock, while vague enough to leave us asking questions. It didn't blow me away or anything, but it did leave me wanting another viewing of the film when it comes to Netflix.

2015 has been a good year for horror. This film is probably fairly low on the scale of 2015 horror movies, not holding a candle to It Follows, and arguably also worse than Insidious Chapter 3 and the Poltergeist remake. Had it been released in 2014, however, it probably would have been among the best of the year, blowing away Annabelle and Ouija. I'm not sure what's changed, but it's changed for the better very quickly.