THE GALLOWS: ACT II

HELLO, HELLO, HERE WE ARE AGAIN, SPOILERS

Again, again, again. And not just because it's a sequel - we were all saying "again, again, again" to the first one because even then the most diehard admirers of the form were getting fed up with the overfamiliar tropes of the found footage style being dragged out again, again, again and The Gallows added nothing to the menu fifteen years after the first wave of sub-Blair Witch cheapies. A further four years on and the format finally seems to be on the wane (at least to judge from the Sainsbury's racks which at one time were heaving with the damnable things): this ditches the dullards-filming-themselves idea after the opening sequence and opts for "normal" filmmaking.

But the reason we're still saying "again, again, again" in spite of the abandonment of first-person camcorder wobblivision, is that The Gallows: Act II falls squarely in that modern school of fairly light horror, ticking off a whole different set of boxes on a no-longer new and exciting checklist. Much of it has the feel of Happy Death Day, Truth Or Dare, Countdown or Friend Request, though the film it feels most similar to is actually the not-any-good Slender Man: youngsters summon up a ghost after finding stuff online and bad stuff happens. In this instance the ghostly hangman is summoned by reading from a play which was cursed following the accidental death of an actor on the titular gallows (and which was being unwisely restaged in the first film)...

So this one doesn't do anything new or startling, but it does go through the paces pretty competently and far better than the previous one. There are several extended scenes of can't-look-must-look creepiness in which something might be lurking in the darkness, under those sheets, in that closet... which are well staged with the jolts nicely timed in the relative quiet and darkness (though it does prompt the usual question about why people don't turn the lights on in their own homes). And it does at least try and expand its mythology rather than simply repeat the existing plot with new victims, including one returning character from before. Neither terrible nor great, it does its familiar thing decently enough on the multiplex popcorn-jumper level (and works acceptably well on home viewing in a darkened room) and is far from the worst thing you'll ever see.

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