FILM REVIEW OF ''THE GALLOWS" (2015)

The claustrophobic, found-footage, horror chiller "The Gallows" (* OUT OF ****) keeps you hanging for almost 8o minutes with nothing that might either shock or scare you. The few ominous moments when the filmmakers actually frighten us are quickly forgotten. Most of the time, we see images of feet trampling floors, epileptic hand-held cameras prowling eerie hallways, and dramatic lapses when the characters deliberately avert their cameras from their devious endeavors. Sadly, "The Gallows" provides little that would alarm you enough to make you scream until you couldn’t scream. Clearly, rookie co-writer and directors Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing have drawn most of their inspiration for their woebegone tale from classics such as "The Blair Witch Project" (1999), "Candy Man" (1992), and "Carrie" (2013). The film follows three mischievous pranksters as they break into their own high school after hours to destroy the set of theatrical play scheduled to open the next day. Idiotically, they bring along both video cameras and smart-phones to document their mayhem. First, Cluff and Lofing must have enjoyed "The Blair Witch Project" with its frantic hand-held photography.  Unfortunately, shooting the events from a first person perspective does little to heighten the horror, and found-footage films have long since exhausted their novelty. Second, you can endanger yourself in "The Gallows" by uttering a dead man's name three or more times. Obviously, Cluff and Lofing appropriated this trope from "Candyman" and its sequels where invoking the bogyman's name three times served to summon the supernatural fiend. Third, the pranks may remind you of the depraved teens in "Carrie" that sabotaged the beauty pageant. Cluff and Lofing go to painful lengths to maintain an eerie atmosphere, but they never pay-off this white-knuckled frenzy with palatable hysteria. Mind you, good horror movies boast intimidating villains. The bogyman in "The Gallows'" amounts to little more than an anonymous apparition without a menacing musical motif to enhance its malevolence. Comparably, Cluff and Lofing have tried to clone him in the mold of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, or Candyman. Basically, this puzzling predator with a noose never rattles your nerves. Furthermore, "The Gallows" neglects to adequately reveal either the evildoer’s identity or its motive for behaving like an omniscient force of annihilation.

"The Gallows" unfolds in 1993 at Beatrice High School somewhere in Nebraska. A parent with a camcorder is taping a costume play that resembles Arthur Miller's "The Crucible." A character is sentenced to swing from a gallows. Suddenly, everything goes horribly wrong when an implausible prop malfunction occurs. The actor with a noose around his neck strangles to death before anybody can save him. The premise about a high school play gone horribly wrong is provocative, but it is wholly preposterous. Imagine high school administrators allowing their theater students to stage a play with a fully operational gallows? Such material itself would constitute dire poor taste. Incredibly, some twenty years afterward this tragedy, the same Nebraska high school decides to commemorate the tragedy with a new production of the same play. Had "The Gallows" been set in an off-campus little theater, the premise might have been credible. Anyway, the night before the play opens, a trio of students vandalizes the set. One of them is the actor scheduled to put his head in the noose. A high school football player, Reese (Reese Mishler), has been persecuted without mercy by his gridiron classmate, Ryan (Ryan Shoos), into participating in this notorious prank. Ryan has convinced Reese that Reese lacks the most basic acting skills. Furthermore, Ryan contends that Reese will succeed only in making a buffoon out of himself in front of the whole school. Essentially, Ryan has coerced a reluctant Reese into participating because if they smash up the sets, the play will be canceled, and Reese will not have to expose himself to ridicule. Ryan's haughty cheerleader girlfriend, Cassidy (Cassidy Gifford), tags along for laughs. The trio wind up trapped inextricably in the school. Improbably enough, neither their smart-phones nor the land lines in the school will function since cosmetic evil permeates the premises. Doors which shouldn't lock mysteriously lock, and an ancient analog television rebroadcasts the tragic news report from the past about the hanging. Nothing that these terrified teens do serves to deliver them from this labyrinth where a humorless, supernatural spirit decked out in a hangman's mask stalks them with a noose. Complications ensue when another student, Pfeifer (Pfeifer Brown), catches them in the act. She is the drama queen who spearheaded the play's revival and doesn't understand why they want to interfere with the premier.

Meantime, accompanying stupid teenagers through a maze of halls rapidly degenerates into monotony rather than melodrama. These cretins lack the common sense to wedge doors open so those doors don't slam shut behind them. Characterization remains sketchy, and nothing about these nitwits engenders charisma. None of them emerge as entirely sympathetic, so we really don't care when the hangman slings his rope around their throats. "The Gallows" relies on a largely unknown cast, but these amateurs acquit themselves admirably. As the obnoxious jock, Ryan Shoos is perfectly cast. You will hate this dastard from the moment you meet him. He deserves the noose that the villain snaps around his neck. Reese Mishler plays the only character with a shred of sympathy, and he seems to be channeling Tom Cruise. Reese is undoubtedly the most interesting and disturbed character. Frank and Kathie Lee's daughter Cassidy Gifford plays a repellent cheerleader. The production values are strong, and the high school really seems like a spooky labyrinth. Cluff and Lofing had a promising idea, but they never generate adequate thrills, chills, and spills. Subsequently, the atmospheric horror induces yawns more than yells. They don't make their monstrous villain into a larger-than-life nemesis like Freddy and his competitors. The scenes after the play when the police show up to arrest the culprits seem awfully predictable, too. Far-fetched and formulaic, "The Gallows “recycles standard-issue horror clichés without traces of either originality or spontaneity.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BOY NEXT DOOR" (2015)

Jennifer Lopez isn’t a bad actress, but she is so miscast so miserably as a high school English teacher in “The Boy Next Door” (* OUT OF ****) that not even a seasoned Hollywood helmer like Rob Cohen can salvage this substandard stalker saga.  Although he has directed hits like “The Fast and the Furious” and “xXx” as well as above-average epics like “Daylight,” “Stealth,” and “Alex Cross,” Cohen appears appallingly out of his element with this formulaic fiasco.  Not only does the tawdry “The Boy Next Door” miscast Lopez, but also it makes Ryan Guzman, John Corbett, and Hill Harper look just as inapt.  Whatever Lopez and the other twelve producers on this picture admired about rookie writer Barbara Curry’s screenplay must have been either altered or didn’t survive the final cut.  Although she received an MFA in scriptwriting from UCLA, Curry should have kept her old day job.  She spent ten years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles where she toiled in the Major Violent Crimes Unit and handled federal cases involving murder-for-hire, prison murder, racketeering, arson, kidnapping, and bank robbery.  Reportedly, Curry taught criminal procedure at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, and pushed for trial advocacy at the U.S Justice Department in Washington, D.C.  In time perhaps, Curry might brush up on her storytelling skills and become a  better writer.  “The Boy Next Door” is neither suspenseful nor surprising, unless you’ve never seen a single stalker movie.  Quite often, our sexy heroine, her oblivious colleagues, and her unsuspecting kin do some really stupid moves that make this movie appear more like a comedy than a drama.  The best thing about this predictable pabulum is that it clocks in at a minimal 91 minutes.  Meanwhile, “The Boy Next Door” has sold enough tickets to qualify as a “hit.”  Produced for a paltry $ 4 million, this mediocre crime melodrama has coined more than $20 million at the box office box, an amount sufficient to pay off its budget as well as its advertising.

Lopez plays English teacher Claire Peterson who teaches classic literature, specifically “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad,” at a California state public high school.  Our heroine looks far too incendiary for her own good.  Mind you, I’m not saying high school English teachers cannot look stunning, but Lopez strains credibility with some of her wardrobe.  As the action unfolds, Claire has separated from her philandering husband, Garrett Peterson (John Corbett of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”), who careens around in muscle cars and had an affair with his secretary.  Since you never get a glimpse of the other gal, you have to wonder how she compared with Claire.  Presumably, Garrett was probably taking advantage of his lowly employee because she was younger than Claire.  Meantime, Claire’s teenage son, Kevin (Ian Nelson of “The Hunger Games”), suffers from asthma and allergies when bullies aren’t badgering him.  The senior citizen next door to Claire (Jack Wallace of “Boogie Nights”) has just taken in his handsome, but orphaned, 19-year nephew, Noah Sandborn (an improbable 27-year old Ryan Guzman of “Step Up Revolution”), whose own dad died in a mysterious car crash.  Hint, hint! Claire encounters this charming Abercrombie & Fitch pin-up boy while she is wrestling with a cranky garage door.  One weekend, while Garrett and Kevin are away on a fishing trip, Claire accompanies her best friend and colleague, High School Vice Principal Vicky Lansing (Kristin Chenoweth of “Strange Magic”), on a blind date from Hell.  The well-meaning Vicky has set Claire up with a gruff anti-intellectual guy.  After she walks out on this loser, our distressed heroine finds herself face to face with charismatic Noah.  During a vulnerable moment, Claire abandons her morals as easily as Noah disposes of her lingerie.  Lopez displays little more than her shapely thighs while Guzman keeps her breasts discreetly covered with his groping paws.  The morning after when he awakens her with orange juice and coffee, Noah cannot imagine why Claire would be racked with recriminations.  Complicating matters even more, Noah is a transfer student who has enrolled in classes at the same high school where Claire teaches.  Lusting after her, Noah decides to pursue Claire, but she rebuffs his advances.  Eventually, Noah turns psychotic.  Initially, he hacks into Claire’s e-mail account and obtains permission from Principal Edward Warren (Hill Harper of CBS-TV’s “CSI: New York”) to enroll in her class with her apparent approval.  Similarly, Noah befriends Kevin, teaches him how to box, and tries to turn him against Garrett who wants desperately to patch up his marriage with Claire.  In a burst of rage, Noah pulverizes one of Kevin’s bullies, and Vicky expels Noah.  Meantime, Vicky uncovers some disturbing information about Noah, and she finds herself on the wrong end of his rage.  Ultimately, Noah horrifies Claire with news that he made a video of their sex act and threatens to expose her!  At this point, you’re liable to laugh your head hysterically off rather than gnaw your fingernails in dread.

Comparatively, “The Boy Next Door” reminded me of “Fatal Attraction,” “Single White Female,” “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” “Swimfan,” and “Basic Instinct.”  In a “Cosmopolitan” magazine interview, Curry said she drew inspiration from a real-life incident involving a high school teacher who had seduced one of her underage students.  Sadly, the relationship between Claire and Noah, especially their voyeur episodes, is so outrageous that you cannot take the drama seriously.  Cohen claims he wanted to craft the ultimate erotic thriller along the lines of those previously mentioned movies, but he embroiders clichés.  Some of the action scenes, particularly a runaway car episode, provide only a momentary relief from the Harlequin-like soap opera shenanigans.  Cohen generates a modicum of suspense in the tradition of “Rear Window” when Claire searches Noah’s man cave for the sex video.  Most of the time, however, you’ll felt insulted by the idiotic antics of these clueless cretins.  “The Boy Next Door” isn’t a third as exciting as last year’s “No Good Deed.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''CARRIE'' (1976)

“Scarface” director Brian De Palma had made about ten feature-length films and several shorts when he made his first classic horror chiller “Carrie” with Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, John Travolta, William Katt, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, and P.J. Soles.  If you look closely, you’ll spot “Miami Vice” regular Michael Talbot, who played Detective Stan Switek, cast as Travolta’s accomplice.  This was author Stephen King’s first novel that Hollywood adapted, and he approved of De Palma and “Ghost Story” scenarist Lawrence D. Cohen’s adaptation.  Performances are uniformly top-notch, with Spacek garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Actress while Laurie received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.  These two make a convincing daughter and mother combination.  Spacek is a revelation when she goes full-tilt telekinetic in the final quarter hour, devastating friends and foe alike. She walked off with the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress.  Amy Irving and Betty Buckley are sympathetic as Carrie’s friend and mentor.  Nancy Allen and John Travolta play a villainous who orchestrated an evening of mayhem with pig’s blood galore. “Carrie” is all about the terrible effects of bullying.

Our poor, disadvantaged heroine grows up with a tyrannical mother whose husband abandoned her and turns into a radical Christian who sees sin in her innocent daughter.  Furthermore, Carrie is an outsider at Bates High School, and her only friend is her gym teacher, Miss Collins (Betty Buckley of “Wyatt Earp”), who struggles to help.  Things get off to quick start after gym class one day when Carrie has her first period in the locker room shower.  Virtually everybody ridicules Carrie’s ignorance and they sling a storm of tampons and feminine napkins at her.  Honestly, Carrie has no idea what is happening because her prudish, repressed mother has told her anything about growing up and the changes that occur with puberty.  Miss Collins reprimands the girls and threatens to revoke their prom privileges if they don’t spend time after classes with her performing calisthenics.   Sue Snell (Amy Irving) regrets her behavior and arranges a prom date between her handsome football hero boyfriend, Tommy Ross (William Katt of “Butch & Sundance: The Early Years”), who reluctantly goes along with her best intentions scheme.  Meanwhile, Sue’s class mate Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen of “RoboCop”) smolders with rage from the treatment that Miss Collins accords her.  Only in the 1970s could a high school teacher assault a student by slapping her face in front of her peers and getting away with no repressions.  Secretly, Chris plots revenge with her class mate Norma (P.J. Soles of “Halloween”) and boyfriend Billy Nolan (John Travolta of “The Devil’s Rain”) and Billy’s buddy Freddy (Michael Talbot) to fix the prom vote so Carrie and Tommy will win.  At the moment that Carrie receives her flower, Chris plans to tip a bucket of swine blood so that Carrie is drenched from head to toe in the gore.  

What nobody knocks is that with the onset of her period, Carrie has developed telekinetic powers.  We see some foreshadowing of this awesome power early in the shower scene and later in the principal’s office when Mr. Morton (Stefan Gierasch of “High Plains Drifter”) mispronounces Carrie’s name as Cassie and the cigarette ashtray fragments.  Later, at home with her warped mother, Carrie shatters a mirror with an etching of Jesus in the background.  Tommy has to harass Carrie before she accepts his invitation to go to the prom with him.  Predictably, Carrie’s mother is dead set against her daughter donning a dress that will prominently display her ‘dirty pillows’ and plans some retribution of her own.  Meanwhile, Miss Collins suspects initially that Sue and Tommy are up no good with Sue’s decision to skip prom and her insistence that Tommy take Carrie.  The night before all Hell breaks loose, Chris, Billy, and Freddy place the bucket of pig’s blood directly over the stage.  Freddy and Norma decide to fix the prom couple vote without anybody knowing any better. 

Naturally, things go smoothly for the evil villains, but they are in no way prepared for the electrifying outcome.  After she is covered in the hog’s blood, Carrie unleashes all her telekinetic powers and all but burns down the auditorium where the prom occurred.  She walks out of these fireworks.  When Chris and Billy try to run her down with his car, she turns her powers on them, their car rolls several times, ignites in a fireball explosion and incinerates them.  Talk about a spectacular way to die!  At home, Carrie washes off all the swine blood and seeks her mother’s loving arms for comfortable only to scream when mom buries a knife in her back.  Carrie has another telekinetic bout and skewers her mom with seven kitchen utensils.  Suddenly, Carrie’s small white house collapses around him, and the sole survivor of this nightmare is Sue.  Sue goes to the flat, level site of Carrie’s house to put flowers on the for sale sign and an arm from Hell soars up from the rocks to seize her, and she awakens to find her own mother consoling her after experiencing a nightmare.  The ending will startle you because this is the last thing that you expect.  Four years later, Sean S. Cunningham appropriated the shocker of a finale in his gruesome but seminal slasher “Friday the 13^th” with a small boy exploding from the calm surface of a lake to stab at a girl after the heroine had taken refuge in a boat to escape the villainess at Camp Crystal Lake.

Director Brian De Palma never wears out his welcome with this 98-minute melodrama about a young girl and her supernatural powers and went on to exploit it in his next film “The Fury.”  “The Fury,” however, was not the memorable experience that “Carrie.”  A belated, a non-related sequel, “The Rage: Carrie 2” (1999), followed along with a 2002 television remake in 2002 that never became  a weekly series, and more recently Kimberly Peirce’s remake based on Cohen’s screenplay hit theaters with Chloë Grace Moretz as the eponymous and Julianne Moore as her disturbed mother.  Incredibly, the “Carrie” remake surpass De Palma’s classic while it updates the action.  For example, during the shower scene, Chris shoots a video of Carrie groveling in the shower while the girl rain down tampons on her as they chant “Plug it up!”

FILM REVIEW OF ''ABDUCTION" (2011)

You know a movie is in trouble when its title has no relevance to its subject matter. Webster’s defines abduction as “to carry off (as a person) by force.” The second part of the definition clarifies abduction as “the unlawful carrying away of a woman for marriage or intercourse.” For the record, nobody abducts anybody in the straightforward but derivative John Singleton pursuit procedural thriller “Abduction.” “Twilight” heartthrob Taylor Lautner carries the picture on his shoulders as a sympathetic hero who takes it on the lam when he discovers his parents are not related to him by blood. If you’ve seen the “Abduction” trailers, you know that our handsome high school hero discovers his face at a missing persons website equipped with software which enables users to see what the person would appear now as an adult. Our heroine and the heroine realize their worst fears when the resemblance between the computer generated image and he are virtually identical. Not only does “Abduction” (** out of ****) qualify as a lackluster white-knuckled suspense saga, but also it is far less entertaining than a similar thriller “Hanna” about an adolescent girl on the run. Furthermore, the Taylor Lautner hero is far from being a lethal weapon. He doesn’t kill as many people as Hanna, and he isn’t as comfortable with his transient lifestyle as Hanna. Lautner the actor manages to hold his own around a substantially heavyweight supporting cast that includes Sigourney Weaver, Alfred Molina, Maria Bellow, and Michael Nyqvist. The target audience for this PG-13 rated road trip ranges between ages 10 and 16. Lautner sheds his shirt often enough for his female fans, and he acquits himself adequately in all his close-quarters combat scenes. Nevertheless, “Abduction” will not carry you away.

Nathan Harper (Taylor Lautner of the “Twilight” franchise) feels like something is wrong with his parents. They strike him as being strange, but he has no clue about how strange that they ultimately turn out to be. Otherwise, Nathan is no different than any other high school junior. He is the kind of athlete who never loses a wrestling match. He lives across the street from a drop-dead-gorgeous cutie, Karen (young Elizabeth Taylor look-alike Lily Collins of “The Blind Side”), who he has not dated since the eighth grade. Currently, Karen is involved with a college-age clown, but she eventually gives him the boot. Meanwhile, when Nathan isn’t in school or partying hardy at a neighbor’s house, he attends therapy sessions with his shrink, Geraldine Bennett (Sigourney Weaver of “Alien”), who seems genuinely concerned about his welfare. Nathan has trouble sleeping. He has had a history of violence, but the authorities haven't had to take him into custody. Further, he has a recurring nightmare about seeing a woman in a Parisian motel being killed. Nathan witnesses this cold-bloodied murder as a child beneath a bed. No matter what Nathan does, however, he cannot seem to please his pugnacious father, Kevin (Jason Issacs of the “Harry Potter” franchise) who constantly picks fights with him. Little does poor Nathan know that his mixed martial arts clashes with Kevin will come in handy.

One day his high school teacher, Mr. Miles (Roger Guenveur Smith of “American Gangster”), assigns Nathan to research a project involving missing persons. The catch is that Mr. Miles assigns Karen as Nathan's partner. Initially, they begin their project at Nathan’s house in his bedroom. They stumble onto a website with a juvenile photograph of a kid who is the dead ringer for Nathan. Nathan is troubled when he finds a shirt that corresponds with the one that the kid is wearing in the picture. Karen tries to argue that the shirt is merely similar to the one in the photo, until Nathan points out that the stain on the shoulder is identical. Nathan discusses the subject with his mother, Mara (Mario Bello of NBC-TV’s “Prime Suspect”), and she breaks down and confesses that neither Kevin nor she are his blood relations. No sooner has this cat slipped out of the bag than two plainclothes government agents invade the premises and gundown Kevin and Mara. Karen walks in while all this mayhem is transpiring, and Nathan struggles to protect her from these lethal louts. A dying assailant warns them about a bomb in the oven, and an obvious CGI explosion blows their house to smithereens and hurls our hero and heroine into a swimming pool. Later, Nathan catches a television news story about the explosion, and the newscaster reports that nobody died. Apparently, according to the authorities, nobody was at home during the explosion. Nathan calls 911 from a pay phone. Before he grasps what is happened, he finds himself talking to CIA agent Burton (Alfred Molina of “Spider-Man 3”) who wants to help him. Nathan and Karen do their best to dodge the CIA, but the company catches up with them after Nathan kills an assailant on an Amtrak train. Freshman scenarist Shawn Christensen raises the stakes even higher as a group of foreigners armed with sophisticated gear and exotic sniper rifles arrive as if on safari to locate him.

Sadly, the twists and turns in the Christensen screenplay won’t have you performing impossible contortions like a first-rate thriller would have you do. John Singleton makes this realistic but far-fetched thriller into a tolerable potboiler. Beyond that “Abduction” is not very abducting. There is a fight on an Amtrak that has been compared with the Sean Connery & Robert Shaw brawl on the Orient Express in “From Russia with Love.” There is no comparison. The finale at the Pittsburgh Pirates stadium is nothing special. Indeed, one villain calls it quits too easily while another is simply shot down in the street. “Abduction” is the first film that “Boyz n the Hood” director Singleton has made in six years. Singleton’s last movie “Four Brothers” was misfire remake of the John Wayne classic “The Sons of Katie Elder.” The way that Singleton is going, he may not make another movie is another six years. Taylor Lautner should be happy playing third-string in the “Trinity” franchise.