10 Blumhouse Productions That Prove The New Halloween Movie Is Doomed

Even if you haven’t watched Paranormal Activity or Unfriended, The Gallows is tiresome and overly familiar. There’s another group of interchangeable teenagers with cameras, another ghost and lots of screaming and running around to get through before the end credits roll.

The advantage of employing the found footage format is that you don’t have to tell a story in three acts – just have a caricature pick up a camera, make some “amusing” remarks and then show them being chased down corridors for the rest of the film. You don’t have to build a solid story or even have a threatening antagonist, just throw in a barely-glimpsed figure wielding a noose.

The usual weird goings on – bizarre telephone calls, assaults by an unseen force etc – ensue, but the movie does have one neat moment. When a character stares into the camera, you think she’s about to give a Heather Donahue-style monologue, but then she’s dragged offscreen by some sinister entity.