The Gallows

Here is one of those horror movies that has a suitably creepy location (in this case, a high school at night), but then does very little with it, and it all leads up to one of the dumbest endings in recent memory.  The Gallows is not the worst found footage horror I have seen, even if the plot doesn't make a lot of sense at times.  But then, little by little, it loses interest in itself until ultimately it gives us a conclusion so convoluted, you have to wonder if first time filmmakers, Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing, were snickering as they wrote the idea for their ending down on paper.

The story is set in a suburban community that suffered tragedy 20 years ago in 1993 when, during a high school production of a play, an accident occurred on stage when a young actor named Charlie Grimille was killed in a prop malfunction concerning a noose and gallows set piece.  Now, wait, I hear you saying - If the movie is set in the present, wouldn't 20 years ago be 1995?  Very observant, reader!  The answer lies in the film's road to the screen, in which it was filmed two years ago and has been waiting for a while for a distributor.  But, I digress.  In the present, the school has decided to honor the memory of the tragedy by performing the play once again on the anniversary of Charlie's death.  Do schools actually honor the death of a student like this?  It sounds kind of morbid to me, but the movie fails to address it, so we just have to go with it.  The movie fails to address a lot of stuff in its set up actually, so prepare to just go with it a lot.

Playing the role that Charlie performed 20 years ago is football jock Reese Houser (Reese Mishler), who is mainly doing the play so that he can get close to drama geek queen, Pfeifer Ross (Pfeifer Brown), who he secretly has a crush on.  He apparently has no real acting talent, however, and can't remember his lines, so we wonder why he got the lead role in the first place.  Reese's obnoxious best friend, Ryan (Ryan Shoos), constantly follows him around with a camera,serving as our point of view for a majority of the film.  A cheerleader named Cassidy Spiker (Cassidy Gifford, daughter of TV personality, Kathie Lee Gifford) also hangs around, but she does not contribute much.  The play is not going well, thanks mostly to Reese's performance, and Ryan convinces him that the best course of action is for the friends to sneak into the high school that night and destroy the set, thereby canceling the production.  Ryan discovers that the outside door leading to the school auditorium is broken and can't close all the way, so they use it to sneak back into the building after hours.

As they set about their plan, they learn that Pfeifer is there late at night too, which is not at all suspicious, and Reese and his friends don't question what she is doing there nearly as much as they should.  When they try to leave the building, they find that all the doors are now suddenly locked, even the broken one that they used to enter the school.  It is then that someone or something starts stalking them, and leaving eerie clues tied to the original 1993 production that are connected to the deadly accident.  Is it the ghost of Charlie, who is said to haunt the school auditorium?  To reveal any more would be spoiling, so I'll stop here.  What I will say is that when the answers come during the film's last five minutes, it will leave audiences feeling cheated and angry.  Not only is the plan of how the person (or persons) responsible for all of this convoluted as all hell, but it makes even less sense the more you think about it.

The Gallows wants to be kind of an 80 minute campfire ghost story, but the plot seems like it was not even thought through, and it's just not very scary.  The basic idea behind the scares is that an abandoned school at night is kind of creepy, and they are right.  But there has to be a whole heck of a lot more, and the filmmakers kind of stop at this basic idea.  The film's villain, who starts hunting down and killing the kids roaming around the school with a noose, doesn't make much of an impression and seems to be an afterthought.  Even the kids at the center of the story don't have much to them.  Reese is a bonehead football jock who can't act, Cassidy is given no personality to speak of and just acts scared, Pfeifer is such a drama geek that she apparently wears her period piece costume from the play to class in one early scene, and Ryan is such an over the top jerk caricature that he almost comes across as a parody of a jerk, and we wonder how anyone can stand being around him.  The whole thing is pretty thin soup, and doesn't hold up even while we're watching it.

And then there is that ending.  You have no idea how desperately I want to spoil it and talk about how it just makes no sense, but I'll play by the rules that all critics must follow, and will not.  But, there are plenty of ways to read detailed descriptions of what happens, such as Wikipedia or message boards.  I normally don't condone this, but if you are considering seeing this movie, I say save your money and read up on the film's ending.  I guarantee it will give you second thoughts.  Not only will you have saved yourself from having to sit through a mediocre movie, but you'll be a lot happier.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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