There’s a reason you don’t mix high school theater and horror movies: both are full of drama, bad lighting, and people pretending to die. The Gallows (2015), directed by Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff, is proof that some things should stay buried — especially the found footage genre.
In theory, it’s a promising setup: 20 years after a tragic onstage hanging, a group of students decide to resurrect the cursed play that caused it. In practice, it’s 81 minutes of shaky cam, screaming in the dark, and characters so stupid you begin rooting for gravity to finish them off.
Act One: The Ghost of Common Sense Past
The film opens in 1993, when a high school student named Charlie Grimille accidentally hangs himself during a performance of a play called The Gallows. (Because nothing says “educational theater” like public executions.)
Flash forward 20 years. The same school decides to restage the same cursed play that literally killed a kid, because apparently no one in this town has ever heard of bad omens, lawsuits, or taste.
Enter Reese (Reese Mishler), a football player who joins the drama club only to impress Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown), the school’s resident theater queen. His friend Ryan (Ryan Shoos) — yes, these characters share names with their actors, perhaps to help them remember their lines — convinces him to sabotage the play by sneaking into the school at night to destroy the set. Because that’s what good friends do: break into buildings to commit petty vandalism.
Ryan brings along his girlfriend Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford), because why not make this illegal activity a double date? Naturally, Pfeifer shows up too, because found footage horror movies thrive on coincidence, contrivance, and people who ignore common sense.
Act Two: High School Musical Meets The Blair Witch
Once they’re inside the school, things start to go wrong — or, more accurately, even more wrong than the plot already was. Doors lock, lights flicker, and everyone realizes their cell phones have no signal. (Because in the horror movie universe, every school has a built-in Faraday cage.)
Before long, the gang discovers that the set they tried to destroy has mysteriously reassembled itself, like a haunted IKEA product. A TV turns on, playing old news footage of Charlie’s onstage death — because ghosts apparently know how to edit highlight reels.
The group soon learns that Charlie was an understudy who only performed that night because the lead actor — wait for it — was Reese’s father. So now it’s personal! Or it would be, if the movie didn’t spend the next hour making you wish Charlie would hang you instead.
The Cast: Death by Dumb
Found footage horror always relies on annoying characters who can’t stop recording no matter what happens. The Gallows raises this to an Olympic level.
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Reese is the kind of protagonist who makes “acting” look like a punishment. His emotional range goes from “mild confusion” to “slightly more confusion.”
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Ryan is the designated comic relief, except he’s not funny. Every line he delivers sounds like a rejected audition for Jackass: The Paranormal Years.
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Cassidy exists purely to scream, whimper, and eventually die. She’s the horror equivalent of an unpaid intern — disposable, underdeveloped, and constantly terrified.
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Pfeifer is the mysterious theater girl who keeps saying things like, “The show must go on,” which is always a red flag in a movie where the show literally kills people.
They’re all so irritating that you start to empathize with the ghost. If I were Charlie Grimille, I’d be dragging these idiots into the rafters too.
The Ghost: Hangman, But Make It Boring
Let’s talk about the villain — or rather, the vague shape in the dark holding a noose.
Charlie, now resurrected as a supernatural hangman, spends most of the movie lurking in shadows, creaking ropes, and occasionally yanking people into the air like he’s auditioning for Cirque du Suffering. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t have clear motives beyond “revenge,” and he kills people with the efficiency of a drunk stagehand.
The kills themselves are about as imaginative as a high school pep rally: one character gets rope burns, another gets yanked into the ceiling, and another just disappears. It’s like watching Final Destination if it were directed by the drama teacher who lost the budget halfway through tech week.
By the time the ghost finally hangs someone onstage, you’ve stopped caring who lives or dies — you just want someone to turn on a light so you can see what’s happening.
The Camerawork: Shaky, Shadowy, and Straight to Hell
You know that one friend who can’t film a birthday party without making everyone seasick? That’s who shot The Gallows.
The “found footage” conceit could’ve worked if it added realism or atmosphere, but instead it’s just 80 minutes of jittery nonsense. Every chase scene looks like a GoPro commercial for vertigo. Half the time, the camera is aimed at the floor, and when it’s not, it’s staring at walls.
The lighting is so bad that most of the movie resembles an audio drama. You hear the screams, but you can’t see who’s screaming — or why. It’s less “supernatural horror” and more “radio static with a body count.”
The Script: Written on the Back of a Detention Slip
The dialogue in The Gallows is so unnatural it feels like it was written by a committee of teenagers communicating exclusively through text messages. Every line is either exposition or pure cringe.
Examples include gems like:
“You can’t hang me, man!”
“Charlie, stop!”
“The show must go on!”
Yes, that last one is repeated. A lot. You can practically hear the screenwriters high-fiving each other for slipping it in again, as if repetition could make it profound.
And the plot twists — oh, the plot twists. By the time we discover that Pfeifer is Charlie’s daughter (what?), and that her mother Alexis has been watching the murders like it’s Netflix and Kill, you’ve completely checked out. The film tries to end with a shocking reveal, but it lands somewhere between laughable and incoherent.
Blumhouse Presents: The Budget Must Go On
Blumhouse Productions has made some genuinely terrifying low-budget hits — Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Get Out. But The Gallows feels like the one they greenlit after losing a bet.
At $100,000, it’s one of their cheapest films ever, and boy, does it show. The sets are bare, the effects are minimal, and the only thing scarier than the ghost is the editing. It’s a miracle the camera batteries lasted longer than the audience’s patience.
The film’s 2019 sequel, The Gallows: Act II, proves that evil truly never dies — it just goes straight to VOD.
The Real Horror: The Audience
The true victims of The Gallows aren’t the teens on screen — they’re the people who paid for tickets. This movie grossed $43 million worldwide, which is less a success and more an international cry for help.
Watching it feels like being stuck in a high school auditorium during an endless tech rehearsal: everyone’s yelling, nothing works, and you can’t find the exit.
The only scary part is realizing this entire thing takes place in one building, yet somehow manages to feel padded. Even the ghost seems bored. At one point, I swear he stops mid-chase to sigh, “This again?”
Final Thoughts: The Rope Snaps, But the Pain Remains
The Gallows isn’t just a bad horror movie — it’s a cautionary tale about what happens when ambition, stupidity, and poor lighting form an unholy trinity. It mistakes darkness for dread, noise for tension, and stupidity for suspense.
By the time the credits roll, you’re not frightened — you’re free. The real exorcism is deleting this movie from your watch history.
Final Score: 2/10
A high school play so cursed it killed found footage horror for good. The only thing hanging here is your hope for quality filmmaking.
