The Gallows (2015)

I love this movie so much

You won't be disappointed!

Good concept, poorly executed.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I remeber when I first saw the trailer for this movie, and it scared the hell out of me. When it came out on iTunes (the most convenient place for me to watch it), I immediately rented it without reading the reviews. I loved it. I consider myself a horror movie buff. I'm so desensitized to horror movies that I fell asleep during The Exorcist. However it took me hours to fall asleep after The Gallows. The "villain" was depraved, yet relatable, the scares happened when you least expect them to, and the setting was perfect. The next day, I went to IMDB to review it, and was horrified to see the reviews. People have trashed this movie for no reason. Maybe they just don't come in contact with modern high school students, because the actors pulled off their roles marvelously.

Now before I go on about this, I do enjoy most of the Paranormal Activity series. The 4th and 6th one were kinda meh, in my opinion but I've always loved the style. I've also seen Area 51 directed by the same guy who made those, and I was pleased to see this was too. For me, this absolutely blew Paranormal Activity out of the park. Yes it has cliché moments, but not as predictable as those movies. If you love found footage movies, especially with twist endings, I 100% recommend this movie. Not gonna give it 10 out of 10 cause of course this is a recurring style genre which MANY get bored of but I eat it up. Loved it, would watch it again. Would recommend especially with a friend.

The Gallows (2015) *** (out of 4) During a school production of The Gallows, a prop goes horribly wrong and an actor is killed. Flash forward twenty years and the school is putting the play on again. The night before the show the lead actor and his two friends break into the school to damage the property when they bump into the lead actress. Soon the four are trying to find a way out but realize that they're not alone.THE GALLOWS is a rather strange movie because I started off hating the picture with a passion. I really do mean that I hated this film because I thought the first twenty or so minutes were incredibly annoying. I thought everything about the "found footage" film was annoying and especially the character holding the camera most of the time. For the life of me I couldn't help but wish something would happen to him because he annoyed me to the point where I wasn't enjoying the movie.As I said, the first twenty minutes are pretty bad but once the horror elements start and once the characters get locked into the school things really pick up. I really love found footage movies when they're done right and I think THE GALLOWS is extremely well-made and well-acted. As with the best films in the genre, what makes them work is how the camera just floats around and you're mind prepares you for something scary to happen but you just never know when it's going to happen and this just builds up more suspense.For my money there were plenty of very creepy scenes throughout the picture. This here is certainly the most important part but I'm not going to provide any spoilers so I won't go into any details about what exactly happens. I will say that the look of the killer was very creepy and it certainly helped keep you on guard throughout the ending. I also thought the four actors were extremely believable and good in their roles.As I said, I really hated the first portion of this film but a film like THE GALLOWS is made to scare you and I must admit that the film got the best of me and in the end I had fun with it.

For years mankind has wondered about the possibility of there being someone/something out there in the great expands of the universe. Another intelligent life-force that may one day visit our lowly shores to learn about us curious beings and hopefully not blast us away with advanced technology or decide to take us away for some good old fashioned experimentation. If indeed one day we find ourselves in communication with a great race equal to our technological advancements let us all hope that these visitors do not find a copy of found footage horror film The Gallows, as their judgements upon mankind may be non-recoverable.A film so daft and downright dumb it's hard to fathom how it came into existence in the first place, The Gallows as directed by duo Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing (seriously it took two people to make this turkey!) is the type of film where you can feel your brain cells disappearing with each passing minute as annoying characters make unintelligible decision upon unintelligible decision and seemingly solvable solutions are ignored in the sake of more shakily handled "scares".A new low in the past it's use by date genre of found footage horrors, The Gallows plunges to previously unseen depths of narrative drivel to tell the story of painfully badly acted teenage brats breaking into their seemingly medievally secured school to wreck the set to an upcoming play only to be haunted by an ominous fiend who locks them in the school facility (really there's not a single window that could be smashed to break out of?) to wreck all manner of nasties on them.Watch on in disbelief as these unlikeable creations knock pot plants down, "dismantle" sets by taking a piece of wood out of a stage setting and generally fail at their objective only to be bettered or worsened by the fact that their school break in just happens to be in a school that seemingly has forgone any type of security, whether it be guards, cameras, motion detectors or even the locking of a door that would take 1 minute to fix, this school does not care who wonders its grounds come closing time! It's almost as if The Gallows creators Cluff and Lofing decided they were onto narrative gold or perhaps just an easy paycheck and set forth on making their film no matter if anything actually made sense or if logic was totally bypassed, it's almost akin to a home movie production, just far less funny or enjoyable.The Gallows is neither scary or original and nothing about the film feels even remotely believable, even in a genre that's not supposed to be clothed in reality.Taking place around some seriously lax logic and scenarios, The Gallows gets its rating purely based around the fact it's something that needs to be seen to be believed as for those that thought modern day horrors and found footage films had reached their lowest ebbs, The Gallows is here to show us all that the bar has been set even lower.In other words, all copies of this film should be locked away or simply destroyed quick smart…… before the intergalactic visitors arrive! ½ an unsecured school facility out of 5