REVIEW: The Gallows (15)

The Gallows is the latest found footage horror movie from Blumhouse Productions (who seem to be going from strength to strength).Featuring directors you've never heard of, actors you've never heard of and a story that you probably have, The Gallows is about a set of young people who are running a school play that has a sinister past. The movie is mainly set about a group of them hanging around the school at night time trying to sabotage the play.

The movie starts with some historical footage about the school play, The Gallows, which was ran in Beatrice School in 1993. However a freak accident occurred when one of the young people (who was playing a convicted criminal) was accidently hanged in front of everyone when they were acting out the hanging scene. Cue mass hysteria and a jump to present day.

Nerdy theatre girl, Pfeiffer decided to bring back that fateful school play 20 years later and has the complete backing of the school. Reese, football jock and admirer of Pfeiffer, signs up to star opposite her in the play - but is a terrible actor. Fearing that the play will bomb, Reese's best mate (and arguably the most entertaining character and cameraman) Ryan, hatches a plan to stop the play from happening. This plan includes his ultra hot cheerleader girlfriend Cassidy and him and Reese to go an sabotage the set so the play can't go ahead. When they get accidentally locked in the school in the dark, things start to get a bit scary.

The Gallows is a low budget horror movie but does things rather good considering the fact there's no famous actors, big budget or famous screenwriters behind it. The concept is simple and sometimes predictable - but there are so many horrors being churned out these days it's hard to be original. Even awesome horrors like Saw and Final Destination have so many sequels and copy cats that the impact of the originals have been watered down somewhat from the genius that they were.

The Gallows is genuinely unnerving and there are some jumpy points and it does horror well. It's not an amazing movie but it is certainly worth a watch if you like horrors.  It's not bad, go check it out and let me know what you think.
 

The Gallows is out now in all good cinemas.

 

POPSCORE: 6.5/10

What am I talking about? The Gallows
Where can I find out more? http://thegallowsmovie.com/

If you like this try: Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Unfriended, Creep

Anything else?
Apparently this movie was made by funding from friends of the makers rather than by a studio - the studio only sorted out the distribution.
All of the characters use their real first names in the movie only their surnames are different.

REVIEW: Unfriended (15)

Unfriended (also known as Cybernatural) is another found footage movie but presented in such a way that it's like you are using a lap top. Not only that, but it uses (here comes the product placement) Skype, Facebook, YouTube and a few more. Thing is, as much as I'm not the biggest fan of found footage movies (the best one in recent times was Project Almanac in my opinion) this does it different, and, if you are open to it, it's really pretty good.

The film starts with a girl called Blaire Lily, who has booted up her lap top to chat with her boyfriend. As they start getting a bit raunchy (don't get too excited - she only unbuttons her top) the rest of her friends invade Skype to have a 5 way conversation about their day. It all seems fairly monotonous until all through the convo they finally notice there is an extra caller who is not showing their photo on Skype. Funny things start to happen and soon it is revealed that this extra caller isn't exactly there to be very nice.

Backstory time - there is a young lady by the name of Laura Barns who is ridiculed/shamed on YouTube after getting very drunk at a get together in a field with her classmates. She passes out (I still cannot define whether she was raped or pooed herself or both) but the upshot of it was it was uploaded to YouTube with the tag line "LAURA BARNS KILL URSELF" and then posts were ridiculing her on the site. However, it didn't stop there and overflowed onto Facebook. This cyber bullying obviously affected Laura who took her own life by shooting herself in the head. That's as far as it goes for now, until this random chatter has joined the Skype Squad (I'm trademarking that) and starts talking. It's all kinda ominous until one person discloses it is a year since Laura took her own life and that the account these new messages are coming from are hers.

The film is basic, even some of the young men in the cinema who were noisily scoffing popcorn claimed "This film is rubbish - I could have made that on the computer" are completely missing the point. Yes, it's about as back to basics as found footage goes, but it is suspenseful, realistic and very grounded using things we take for granted every day.  This includes authentic Facebook chat, Skype chats and the like. Although if you really look you can see glaring errors - like erroneous time stamps and the fact a 99kb photo takes over 15 seconds to download but a 1.8GB file takes less than 10 seconds is irrelevant. The film uses those things we see while being on the net as devices to add suspense - the freezing of the Skype picture as one of her friends is screaming and no-one knows what is going on then it stutters on to see a horrific image of a character meeting their fate, or the sinister extra caller issuing threats by chat message and following up on them is both unnerving and quite close to home.

It's been called the Blair Witch Project for the internet generation but it's definitely a horror. It's definitely a thriller. But it also has a message. It's social media gone crazy and it's inference is that a lot of the naughties children (who are now teens) have grown up with this in their lives and a small amount of them think it's funny or cool to degrade and hurt others through pictures, taunts or posts - it's bullying evolved. This film is an example of this to the nth degree. In this movie their dead class mate comes back through the internet to wreak her revenge on those who drove her to kill herself. Although it is highly unlikely that deceased people's Facebook and Skype's will start posting and ringing people, the fact of the matter is that cyber-bullying is very real and affects people in this way.

The film then is a horror - it's jumpy in parts. It's basic and it's premise is simple, but it's the message that is what was clearest for me. A lot of people left the movie at the end and didn't seem to struck on it and I guess it's an acquired taste. But it's clever, very clever.

Unfriended is at the cinema now and is rated 15.

POPSCORE: 8/10

What am I talking about? The movie Unfriended

Where can I find out more? http://www.unfriendedmovie.co.uk/
If you like this try: Paranormal Activity, The Ring, Blair Witch Project 

 

REVIEW: Project Almanac (12A)

You know I had never hear of an almanac before Back To The Future; and with the exception of a few visits to a newsagents every so often, it's not a word, or a tome, that I'm familair with. Still, the movie has been named after such a wordy piece of literature. The film is shot in the love-it-or-loathe-it style of being recorded on a video camera by one of the characters at a time. The film is a cautionary time travel tale based around some young science boffins who find blue prints for a time machine device. Naturally they go back in time to do great things - if you think great things are winning the lottery by getting the numbers before they come out, going to sold out music festivals and to woo the girl of your dreams. It's all going swimmingly until they find that even the most smallest change can make a big ripple in the time continuum.
The Michael Bay produced, MTV film, is a product of contemporary film making - doing the whole amateur video camera thing (aka found footage) is getting a bit old now, but it seems to work for this film, even if some of the camera work is frustrating. A lot of the time the characters hold the camera in stupid positions so sometimes it really awkward to see what's going on and have to rely on the speech of the characters to help out.
It a thought provoking story and the acting isn't too bad - it's a typically trendy movie - even though these guys are nerds, they are still like extras from a boy band and all the girls are perfectly made up and pretty - even though one of them is supposed to be bullied at school and plain. Still, the story more than makes up for this and does bring up some salient questions - what would you do with a time machine?
There's a lot of movies that do this wobbly camcorder recording (I'm looking at you Chronicle and Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity: Marked Ones). However a lot of the time it's annoying and falls flat - Chronicle had so much potential but it lost the ball many times - and Marked Ones was just as bad. In a way, this has this legacy, but I thought this movie was good enough to be watchable and to be honest I enjoyed it. I'm not sure if it would have worked in a traditional sense, and I guess this is to time travel movies what Cloverfield is for monster movies, or what Chronicle is to superhero movies.
Overall a good attempt at an original time travel movie, immediatley watchable, but also makes you think.
Project Almanac is out this Friday, 20th February 2015 at all good cinemas.

POPSCORE: 7/10

What is it? Michael Bay produced movie, Project Alamanac
Where do I find out more? http://www.projectalmanac.com/
If you liked this try - Chronicle, Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity: Marked Ones, Super 8