Chris Lofing

  • The Gallows (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2022) I don’t necessarily object to teen horror movies, dumb premises, annoying protagonist or found-footage films by themselves, but blend those elements together and the result seems almost custom-made to exasperate. Beginning with a VHS-grade camcorder recording of a high-school theatrical play that goes horribly wrong when a teen actor is hanged for real (OK, who designed that set?), The Gallows does itself no favour by skipping ahead a few years and positing that the high school is putting together a revival of that very same fatal play. Seriously? Aren’t you just begging evil spirits to do their work at that point? But there’s even worse to come, since, as annoyingly chronicled through various handheld shots, the teenage characters are all as exasperating as they can be. There’s scarcely a difference to be made between protagonists and villains here, as they are all apparently as dumb as they can be while still passing their courses, and all blithely unconcerned about courting disaster with their new project. When they all start dying, well, it comes as a relief—the supernatural presence acting as a culler of the exasperating, cleaning house and leaving the school in marginally better shape once the caskets are buried. Yes, it takes a lot for me to cheer for the antagonist, but writers-directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing ensure that The Gallows handily earns that distinction within fifteen minutes of opening. Die, theatre students, die—and try not to leave a stain on the gallows so that it can be re-used. Because of course there’s a sequel… and it’s not any better.

  • The Gallows Act II (2019)

    The Gallows Act II (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I barely remember anything about The Gallows, and chances are pretty good that I eventually won’t remember much about its sequel The Gallows Act II either. A soporific teenage horror film in which teenage drama club people battle a curse or something more directly dangerous, it’s hampered by the get-go from inferior execution from writers-directors Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff. It’s undistinguished throughout most of its running time (although, thankfully, it avoids the first film’s found-horror conceit)—familiar tropes used without vigour nor cleverness, wrapped in near-amateur filmmaking. There is a bit of a twist ending, but it’s the kind of twist ending that makes the entire film worse, as it makes a mockery of much of the plotting and throws the film into a confusion of genres that doesn’t serve it well. It also requires an implausible conspiracy, but you don’t need anything more to figure out that The Gallows Act II is not a good movie at all—it’s a blend of clichés with a dumb twist, the only thing worth remembering about being that it’s not worth remembering. No wonder it was held back from release by two years—even its producers were embarrassed about it.