Review of The Gallows (2015) by Rado V — 18 Oct 2015

I honestly did want to see The Gallows because it looked interesting, and one of my best friends who was a bit new to the horror genre said that it was a good movie. When coming across it, The Gallows is a terrible movie that could've been a good horror movie for what it brung us. I did find the beginning very creepy as it honestly felt real to me of how in low quality it was, and seeing it go unexpectedly wrong got me a bit shocked. Then after that, we introduce to the most horrible, mean-spirited, and annoying person I've seen in a horror movie in a long time, and the fact that he's the main character, made this into a main problem. So for the fact that when things start to happen, I was waiting for something bad to happen to him. The jumpscares were predictable as you can just know it in a few minutes before it happens, and they were just not scary. The acting is just average, and the writing is just terrible. It doesn't make sense about why it's being filmed, and the twist at the end is very confusing when you think about it. The setting for it is actually pretty creepy when it's in the dark which is pretty effective and could've been used in much better horror films, and it has some interesting effects to the fizzling camera. I'm glad that the camera to camera is becoming a bit more mainstream in today's found-footage movies, but they could've done a bit more of it and made it even creepier. Movies like The Gallows are the reason why the found-footage genre is dying out and that we are going to get rare good found-footage movies.

Now with that said, I did come across the original version of it when I rented the Blu-Ray disc of The Gallows, and I'm not gonna lie, it's better than the movie itself. The acting is surprisingly better, which has mostly the same cast too, and it downgraded the main character's mean-spirited attitude, although it still has some of his attitude scenes. It's actually more creepy than the film that was shown in theaters, but it's not really scary, although there's one moment that actually got me. It does have the same ending which I was groaning, until it starts explaining it which I was very relived about it, even though there were some questions that didn't quite make sense. The original version isn't groundbreaking, heck it's not even a good movie, it's just an all right one that actually could've got better reviews than the version that the creators preferred for the audience to see, and I would've give it 2 stars.