Assuming the best, I purchased my ticket early and made the decision to go see The Gallows with a group of friends on the night of its release.
Sitting in a theater full of too-young-kids that probably snuck in, and guys yelling about how many girls they got laid by that week, I realized the kind of group that this film attracted: "I think I like horror so I came to see this lame movie".
I guess I gave away on my opinion in that last sentence, but we'll get into that.
The Gallows is a story of a group of high schoolers that get trapped inside their school one night while trying to dismantle the set of the school's play, because the lead (a football player) doesn't want to be a part of the play anymore. While they're inside the school, the play's previous lead (who died in a freak accident during the show- he was hanged on stage) comes back to haunt them.
So back to my review of the film: it was awful. It was so bad. If I could take back that hour and 20 minutes of my life, I would gladly do it. I'll explain...
It was an almost-found-footage kind of film. It was all shown through the video camera that one of the characters is carrying around, conveniently documenting everything that goes on. I guess to keep with the theme of having an irresponsible kid holding the camera, the shots are awful, shaky, and nauseating. The camera is CONSTANTLY moving and blurring and cutting in and out, to the point where I actually had to cover my eyes to keep from feeling like I had vertigo. In relation to it being found footage: I am so tired of found footage horror films. It seems like that's all there is lately; it's a cop-out in my opinion because rather than making things truly scary, you minimize what the audience sees by using a video camera. It's lame. It's so, so lame.
Anyway, the acting is fine, I never really felt like the acting was cheesy at any point, however the characters were pretty bad. There was the jock, the theater nerd, the cheerleader, and the football-player-turned-lead-in-school-play. Cliche. Nothing special about a single one of them.
As for the film itself: it was an hour and 20 minutes of awful, unnecessary jump scares and loud noises. I was playing with my melted chocolate bar in the wrapper more than I was watching the film because I was so bored (and nauseous because of the camera). Some jump scares didn't even have anything to do with the "scarier" parts of the film, they were literally just fillers.
The twist at the end was pretty okay- I'll give it that much. I enjoyed how unexpected it was, but even that wasn't done well.
So I guess that was my awful, scathing review of The Gallows. If you want to save yourself some money and time, don't go watch this film. If you have nothing to do and you really want to torture yourself, hey, feel free.
...but really, don't see it.
Until next time, guys! Sorry this review sounded so angry, it was just honestly one of the worst films I've ever seen. :P
No comments:
Post a Comment