“…lacks any imagination, originality, or creativity that could have elevated it to interesting rather than all-around forgettable.”

Found footage films are a dime a dozen these days, ever since The Blair Witch Project first terrified moviegoers in 1999. Shot in only eight days and all the lines entirely improvised, what was so unique about the film was that the actors weren’t told what was going to happen as they filmed each event. Therefore, their reactions on camera were genuine and real. The Blair Witch Project was groundbreaking, and it opened the door for a sea of mostly-average films due to nostalgia wearing off and people growing weary of the shaky style of camcorder-shot movies. However, in 2007, Paranormal Activity took the found footage genre and breathed new life into it, sparking an incredibly popular series with five more films released from 2010 to today, with the last one set to be released in October of this year. When done correctly, the found footage film can be extremely fun. For example, V/H/S in 2012 and V/H/S/2 in 2013 are extremely scary, and I believe they’re so successful because they are broken up into a collection of shorts. The problem found footage films often run into is that they seem long and drawn out since so much footage is included as the actors themselves work the camera, and that brings us to the current film. The Gallows (directed by Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing, 2015) utilizes the found footage format, but unfortunately, it lacks any imagination, originality, or creativity that could have elevated it to interesting rather than all-around forgettable.

This movie begins by showing us the footage from the original 1993 high school performance of the play, The Gallows, where the lead actor, played by a boy named Charlie, dies tragically in a freak accident. In the typical horror genre style, it then cuts to the 20th anniversary of the horrific event, and for some reason, the school board decided to go ahead and let the drama class perform the same play…again. Ryan Shoos (played by Ryan Shoos) is a football player, and he has the job of recording the play on the big night. Yet, for the mere purpose of this being found footage, Ryan takes the camera with him everywhere, catching every stumble and flubbed line delivered by Reese Houser (played by Reese Mishler), the football-player-turned-untalented-actor due to his interest in his costar, Pfeifer Ross (played by Pfeifer Brown). With the help of his cheerleader girlfriend, Cassidy Spilker (played by Cassidy Gifford), Ryan convinces Reese to break into the school at night to trash the stage so that Reese won’t let everyone down with his terrible performance. To their horror, they discover they’ve been locked inside, and they’re not alone.

Let’s be honest here. No one was expecting this to be an earth-shattering film that would redefine the horror genre. However, I was at least hoping for some scares, even if they be cheap, startle-you-scares found in most horror/thriller films. Somehow, throughout the duration of this film, I found myself rarely startled and thoroughly bored. It took far too much time leading up to the actual night in the theater, and while it was slightly entertaining witnessing Ryan tormenting the nerdy drama kids, it was rather cliché. The biggest problem I had, though, was for a relatively short film, a good portion was spent with little to no decent view of what was actually going on. Luckily, there wasn’t much of anything going on anyhow. Even so, I would have preferred to not watch the shifting of tennis shoes as the actors point the camera at the floor. Perhaps it’s realistic, but it isn’t exactly interesting to watch. It felt more like a film you take a friend with to make fun of, not to expect any actual scares.

I typically enjoy when a group of relatively-unknown actors come together in a movie, but unfortunately for them, there just wasn’t anything special here. For being rated R (supposedly for “some disturbing content and terror”…yea right), there wasn’t anything too gruesome to keep this from being knocked down to PG-13. As for the storyline itself, there were plenty of directions they could have went with it. With several suspicious characters sprinkled throughout, I wasn’t too impressed with where they did decide to take it. While I may be disappointed The Gallows wasn’t clever with its delivery, I’m not really all that surprised. I’m giving this one a 3/10.