The Gallows

**Predictable, unoriginal, without great qualities, but still minimally decent.** I usually have low expectations when it comes to horror films because, in order to find a hidden gem, we have to dig through a lot of rubbish. This film, however, isn't as bad as I thought it might be: it's not original (the “Stage Fright” films are good examples of very similar material), it's not memorable, it's not perfect, it's stupidly predictable, but it entertains and creates some dramatic tension. The story is anything but new: a high school theater group will try to stage the play in which, around twenty years earlier, a student met a tragic and stupid death because of a failure in one of the stage props. It turns out that, in these twenty years, this play has become almost cursed, saying the name of the boy who died on stage has become bad luck and the very theater where it all happened seems to be haunted. To make things even more complicated, several members of the cast are disgruntled and don't want the play to go ahead. That's how three of them decide to go to the theater at night and vandalize it. From here on, everything is prepared for the scare show that the ghost will offer us. The film intelligently bets on “found footage” cinematography, which would be better and more credible with fewer cuts, edits and sudden transitions to night footage. I've seen several films with this style and this was the most imperfect and unpleasant. I dare say that Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing, directors and screenwriters, were happier filming than editing their work, and that this was, in part, the consequence of several failed attempts to obtain a softer parental rating. The production budget is visibly weak and there is an effort to make the most of what there is but, as a whole, the film is surprisingly effective, without complicated graphic resources or expensive effects. The cast doesn't have any big names, but young promises trying to make their way in the tough world of entertainment. None of them seemed particularly gifted to me, but Reese Mishler and Pfeifer Brown at least tried to do something good. Ryan Shoos is simply stupid, and Cassidy Gifford is only in this film because the directors felt it necessary to include a girl with breasts big enough to widen the eyes of teenagers in the audience.