The lazy way The Gallows bundles its tropes together suggests that its creators' ambitions went no higher than simply getting a horror film made.

In a quick 80 minutes, we get the back story, we meet the four core characters (all of the young actors do fine work), get the wits scared out of us about a half-dozen times and wind up with a VERY creepy ending.

By now these techniques are too familiar to be truly unnerving, especially as the underlying narrative logic is never explained in any persuasive way.

It was just very slow and not many scares happened.