It’s usually a compliment to say that a sequel is better than the original, but when the original is the 2015 film The Gallows, it sounds like damning with faint praise.
But hear me out: the original found footage film, about a haunted high school play that traps a bunch of teens in their school at night, may have suffered from amateurish acting, implausibly moronic characters and scares that were the opposite of scary. This sequel, however, is a decent little horror film, undermined only by lousy CGI jump scares and an extremely disappointing conclusion.
After a brief prologue, The Gallows Act II eschews the found footage genre in favor of a conventional, significantly more versatile cinematic style. The ghost of “Charlie,” who died in the midst of a high school production of a play called (what else?) “The Gallows,” has become a viral sensation thanks to the footage found after the original film. Folks now take “The Charlie Challenge” and read aloud from the play, only to get freaked out by supernatural occurrences around them, like tables that move on their own.
Auna Rue (Emma Horvath) is an aspiring actor who just got accepted to a high school with a famous theater program, so she moves in with her sister (Brittany Falardeau) to attend classes. Her first attempt at a monologue is an epic bomb, so when a YouTube commenter suggests she try “The Charlie Challenge” to boost her views, she tracks down “The Gallows” and starts rehearsing. Not only does she get good, and earn the respect of her teacher and classmates, bu she also gets Charlie, whose supernatural shenanigans boost her online popularity.
You can say this much about The Gallows Act II: Auna is making plausible mistakes. She’s a teenager who dreams of finding an audience and it makes sense that, when she finds one, she wouldn’t look the gift ghost in the mouth. Only too late does she realize that Charlie won’t leave her alone; he’s stalking her and her sister in their house, and he won’t stop until they are very much dead. It’s uncomplicated and formulaic, but it’s effective, functional writing, and it’s wildly superior to the first The Gallows, in which the main character was motivated by not wanting to get caught committing all the crimes he was intentionally filming himself committing, for… reasons.
The Gallows Act II was written and directed by Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing, who also wrote and directed the first movie. It’s a major step forward for them as filmmakers. The cast turns in superior performances to those found in The Gallows, with Horvath taking center stage and giving a seemingly straightforward character some unexpected layers. The cinematography by Kyle Gentz (Zoombies 2) finds a few novel angles, but most importantly understands the importance of wide aspect ratios in the horror genre, where negative space and hazy background details attract the eyes of audience members searching for shocks.
But as creepy as the film’s subtler moments are, they’re completely torpedoed by a series of lousy CGI jump scares, which lunge at the screen like tacky 3-D gimmicks and never once look convincing. It doesn’t help that the ghost of Charlie, dressed as a hangman, has a ridiculous appearance which, even in silhouette, can even make you laugh in spite of yourself. (Seriously, Charlie? Culottes?)
Even more frustrating is the film’s ending, which takes the story into a logical new direction but then concludes with the silliest thing we’ve seen in this franchise so far. The Gallows Act II was, heretofore, a competent, sometimes scary horror thriller about an ambitious teenaged actor who gets exactly what she wished for, only to find her dreams perverted. It even raised creepy questions about the way the industry eats people alive, and how typecasting can be a form of torture. And then all that goodwill vanishes in a heartbeat. It’s beyond frustrating, and it makes an otherwise decent movie difficult to recommend.
But let’s give credit where credit is due: despite a few (glaring) faults, The Gallows Act II still upstages the original, in every way. That still leaves a lot of room for disappointment, of course, but the filmmakers took this opportunity to evolve as storytellers and they’ve definitely shown their work. If this were a class project it would earn an “A,” but since it’s a feature film, and the point is to captivate the audience and not just demonstrate your artistic potential and growth, all we can give it is…
