The Gallows also relies on a lot of the same stage-magic gimmicks with people moving like ninjas in long shots to scare viewers, but they do a lot of cheating with the hangman ghost flickering in and out with static. It’s a shortcut, but it’s at least a little kind of impressive how steady the camera is for these shots. Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
The Gallows is generic found-footage horror, but in the end it’s quite a likable addition to the endlessly self-replicating subgenre.
The film opens with the original 1993 Beatrice High School production of “The Gallows,” which ends tragically when Charlie Grimille (Jesse Cross), playing the lead after another player backed out, is accidentally hanged for real. The film then cuts to 2013, in which a morbid 20th anniversary showing is being put on starring Reese Houser (Reese Mishler), a football star and hopelessly poor actor only doing it to impress the female lead, Pfeifer Ross (Pfeifer Brown). When they discover a backstage door that doesn’t lock, cameraman and fellow football star Ryan Shoos (Ryan Shoos) convinces his girlfriend, Cassidy Spilker (Cassidy Gifford), and Houser to sneak in and take down the set so that Houser can get more time to practice his lines without disappointing Ross, but the obviously haunted school is obviously haunted, and obvious haunting shenanigans ensue.
The set design in this movie is absolutely fantastic. There are nooses everywhere in this school, whether or not they are actual nooses. The best example is one of the first, when the gang is trapped backstage and being lead down a dark hall to a plot point. Their light can’t pierce all the way down the hall, and as they walk slowly forward, a power tube running straight down the ceiling is the only prominent shape in the frame. The light catches on a break in the tube, giving the entire thing the appearance of a dimly lit noose awaiting the group in the distance for a split second.
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