The Gallows

This review may contain spoilers!

A fairly simple horror that terrifies so incredibly well. I would give The Gallows a 7/10.

This film has a decent amount of scares, yet where the horror element really thrives is the tone that it sets throughout the feature. The pacing all works really well, there's a great introduction to all the characters and the deaths that follow move the plot along exceptionally. A lot has to be said for the sound and music used within the film, there is some seriously haunting stuff used that really amps up the scares a lot.

Pfeifer Brown, who played Pfeifer Ross, was quite a powerful performance; her smarmy arrogant theatre nerd quickly became someone who was very much a convincing horror victim only for it to be fantastically revealed that she's complicit in the haunting.

The best performance of this film came from Ryan Shoos, who played Ryan Shoos. Within this film Shoos was quite a funny component; he brought a very light role at points where it was most needed. This got even better when the students first encountered the spirit within the school as Shoos really broke his character down. It was a complete change in how the character of Ryan was delivered to us and it was very vulnerable.

The 'found footage' style of cinematography is really getting tired; it's become such a common trope of the horror and disaster genre that it's just not worth using as much anymore. The editing is another tired blend of long takes with sudden abrupt cuts; it's just too much of the same and it's not at all original.

Reese Mishler, who played Reese Houser, was a terrible protagonist; he just didn't seem to connect with any of his co-stars on-screen. Cassidy Gifford, who played Cassidy Spilker, was just the generic hot girl that screamed and cried a lot; there wasn't a hell of a lot to her performance.