I don't hate found footage movies. I really don't. I quite enjoyed the first three Paranormal Activity features. I actually loved The Last Exorcism. I also really liked The Blair Witch Project.

Then there are the bad ones. Paranormal Activity 3 comes to mind. The Last Exorcism 2. The Devil Inside.

The cream of the crop are the [REC] movies and, if you count it, Cannibal Holocaust.

Sure, they're overdone these days, but slasher movies weren't in the early 80's? Big bug movies in the 50's? Monster mashes in the 40's?

I try to judge a movie by its merits and not by the genre, or subgenre, it might fall in. Except for zombie movies. Zombies suck, regardless of whether they are fast or slow.

The latest found footage horror movie to hit theaters is The Gallows. Is it good? Read on.

The Gallows starts off promisingly enough. A scene from a high school play goes bad as a young actor accidentally gets hanged on a gallows prop. It's probably best to not ask too many questions about why it is a real, functioning, gallows.

Fast forward around 15 years, and the school is morbidly putting on the exact same play. And, yes, they are using the same gallows. If you think that is stupid and extremely weak screenwriting, you would be dead right.

Meanwhile, an especially obnoxious jock inexplicably carries around a camcorder filming everything he sees and does. Again, it's best not to question this too deeply.

The jock finds little more satisfying than to torment drama students. It's always a plus to have warm, likable protagonists in a horror movie, or how would you feel any empathy for their plight?

The jock gets a brainstorm: Why don't they break into the school and trash the set on the night before the play? Another jock who is barely less loathsome is in the play, and he agrees to help. A trashy chick joins the two athletes, and the fun begins. Oh, to even out the cast a female member of the play shows up as well.

It will be no surprise to learn that things start getting weird pretty quickly, and before you can say Coffin Rock, the kids are trapped in the auditorium, racing through its corridors, bickering with one another, and begging the camera for help.

From there the viewer is treated to a series of cheap shot phony jump scares and a weak-as-water plot that makes no sense whatsoever. Things pick up a little as the students start to get bumped off, but unfortunately the deaths are not gory or the least bit inventive.

Things get even hazier as the plot thickens. There is a contrived ending that is intended to blow the viewer's mind. It only made me wince at the thought of blowing my money on a ticket.

But, hey, I'm a cheap date. I'll allow myself to get fucked by a shitty horror movie, and not even resent it too badly.

The Gallows looks like it was made for around two hundred bucks, so I'm sure it will turn a profit. We can expect more found footage opuses in the future. Let's hope that most of them are at least a little better than The Gallows.

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