[Note: To do the sort of detailed analysis of the film that I like to do requires some spoilers. I’m not going to tag each one. If you’d rather see this movie cold, go watch it, then come back.]
Here’s the official marketing blurb:
20 years after a horrific accident during a small town school play, students at the school resurrect the failed show in a misguided attempt to honor the anniversary of the tragedy – but soon discover that some things are better left alone.
After reading a review that literally begged the reader not to go see The Gallows I was a bit disappointed. I’d seen the original movie trailer and the movie had seemed promising, so I’d been looking forward to it for some months. The scene in the trailer used my favorite filming technique of allowing something to slowly move out of the background without further comment. I was hoping that it would be a film that had the confidence to let things be scary without trying to force it to be scary. Despite the awful reviews I read, it largely succeeds in that regard, and the movie is scary.
However, the movie has some serious problems as well, and the signs of those problems were evident right from the trailer. While those problems are very real, I don’t think this movie deserves the harsh reviews it’s received. Hopefully I’ll be able to highlight some of the things that make this film very worth watching (and you should watch it), but I’m not going to go easy on its flaws.
The two biggest complaints I’ve read about The Gallows are bad acting and predictability. I’ll address these first: I don’t think the acting was bad in this film. The characters were teenagers, and they acted like teenagers. They made a lot of stupid decisions, and are generally asshats, but that isn’t out of character. A specific charge I read said that the actors seemed like they were in fact attempting to method-act being bad at acting—but were themselves bad at it. I quite simply don’t agree with that charge. The acting seemed lively to me; their fear was convincing. I think that the reviewer I read was conflating the fact that he hated all the characters with his perception of their acting skills. While I partially agree in that I don’t like some of the characters, I thought their characterization was good, and I think the overall writing of the characters themselves was smart—more on that later.
Regarding predictability in the twist, I’m going to have to agree on this one, but I don’t think the twist specifically harms the film. There are some problems with the specifics of the plot, but overall I think the plot was strengthened by the twist rather than weakened. Without it, there wouldn’t have been any point to the events that happened, which, while still scary, would have strained credulity as to why such serious incidents had not taken place in the school’s theater before then—and credulity is a thing that this film cannot afford to spend freely. More on that later as well.
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