The Gallows (2015)★★★☆☆

This movie was mostly okay, but I have never wanted a “protagonist” to die as much as Ryan. Seriously. From the start, I wanted to rip the camera out of his hands and give it to anyone else. His “colorful” commentary and stereotypical bullying made him one of the most unsympathetic characters I’ve ever seen.

The rest of the relatively unknown actors in the cast were okay. They worked well together and the dialogue was mostly believable. And there are definitely some creepy moments to the film.

But can we talk about the jump scares for a second? There were so many jump scares in this movie. Yes, I’m a sucker for them and they get me every time, but a movie shouldn’t rely solely on jump scares to get you.

The ending was okay, but (trying to avoid spoilers here) the descent into madness for a few of the characters at the end seemed a bit rushed. They’re totally lucid and normal until the last five minutes, which, sure, makes the ending harder to predict, but it also makes it harder to believe.

Also, I guess this was supposed to be something like a found footage film, but the jump cuts were handled poorly and ended up a bit disorienting. It looked less like “found footage” and more like “edited footage,” and at that point they could have just ditched the found footage style altogether.

The one nice thing that came out of the found footage style was the lack of background music…mostly. There were a few points where I thought I was hearing background music (though maybe this was supposed to be what the characters were hearing?) which didn’t make sense in a found footage film. But it wasn’t too distracting, and overall this movie was reasonably entertaining and had me sleeping with the lights on after watching.