The Gallows

The Gallows is yet another "found footage" horror movie that should have remained lost.

It has been 16 years since The Blair Witch Project spun the gimmick into box office gold, and a half dozen Paranormal Activity films and a legion of knockoffs have exhausted any novelty the genre once had. Paranormal Activity producer Jason Blum should take a break from the genre before he squanders any good will he has left among horror fans.

The Gallows is noteworthy in that it has no chills to speak of.

The supernatural entity that's tormenting Nebraska high school students in this film has picked four of the least interesting youngsters in cinema history. The four are so dull that Jason Voorhees (or his mother) would have offed them in the early minutes of one of the Friday the 13th films. They're impossible to care about.

It's not like the ghostly killer does anything interesting anyway. Dressed like an executioner, his primary power seems to be that of a Stanley garage door opener.

Along with a killer tiresome enough to induce massive fits of narcolepsy, lead character Ryan (Ryan Shoos) is the most obnoxious protagonist in recent memory. He takes his camera everywhere he goes, filming what's sure to be a botched production of a play dubbed The Gallows.

When he's not making snide (but groan inducing) wisecracks during rehearsal, he's taunting the play's leading man Reese (Reese Mishler), the fellow who has the misfortune of being his best friend. Even by the low standards applied to slasher (or in this case strangler) movie teens, these guys redefine tedious and stupid.

Whenever Ryan isn't making casually misogynistic remarks or bullying the students who take the play seriously, he's mocking Reese's difficulties conveying believable emotions or even memorizing lines.

Most of the film is told from Ryan's point of view, and that prevents viewers from caring if he or his classmates survive the haunting.

(By the way, where is Freddy Krueger when he's most needed? Any one of his dream-based murders would be scarier and more imaginative than what made it to the screen here.)

The lazy plot hinges around a 20th anniversary revival of The Gallows after the leading man died for real during the climax of the play. Why anyone living in a small town would invite supernatural scorn or a relentless flood of bad taste and painful memories is beyond comprehension. It's as if the protagonists were cattle willfully stampeding into the open gates of a feedlot.

Writer-directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing run out of inspiration early and even have trouble determining who might be holding the camera or why it's still on. Thanks to the inordinate time spent on the self-absorbed Ryan (who takes a few seconds from his irritating banter to shoot himself grinning into the screen like a vain chimp), the plot twists aren't that alarming, and the neck-based attacks get old quickly.

The makeup makes the victims look less like they have rope burns and more like they should invest in a tube of Clearasil.

Cluff and Lofing take forever to set up any chills and by the time they have, changelings have turned their attempts at horror into unintentional hilarity. My audience howled in derisive giggles as the directors spent seemingly endless screen time literally shoegazing. The battered floors of a high school look just as unappealing on the big screen as they do in real life.

The only intriguing aspect of the movie is that the play is set in the 18th century so the cast must speak in horrible "English" accents. Their performances fail to improve when they put on modern dress.

Instead of fattening the already overstuffed coffers of Time-Warner, why not try making your own found footage horror film? Chances are excellent it will be scarier than anything Cluff, Lofing or their arthritically-paced hangman can conceive.

MovieStyle on 07/10/2015