the-gallows-20-things-to-know-about-the-horror-thriller

Filmmaking duo Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing make an awesome feature debut with their indie horror film, The Gallows, starring Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, and Cassidy Gifford. The found-footage style thriller, inspired by real events that occurred in Lofing’s home town of Beatrice, Nebraska, centers on a group of teens who attempt to resurrect a failed school play 20 years after the accidental death of its lead actor, Charlie Grimille. When producer Dean Schnider saw the filmmakers’ trailer on YouTube, he was impressed and agreed to represent them. He brought their work to the attention of producer Jason Blum and The Gallows became a Blumhouse movie distributed by Warner Bros.

At the Los Angeles press day, held at Hollywood High School in an auditorium that’s long been rumored to be haunted, Cluff, Lofing, Mishler, Brown, Shoos, Gifford, and Schnider talked about their creative collaboration, how Cluff and Lofing’s friendship led to Tremendum Pictures, what inspired them to do a horror film, how they found their cast, the last minute decision to bring Gifford onboard, what it was like for the actors to shoot found-footage style and work with two directors, their spookiest encounters on set, and the iconic look they found for Charlie.

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From the interview, we’ve compiled a list of 20 interesting things to know about The Gallows. Be aware there may be a few spoilers.

1. How Cluff and Lofing’s creative partnership came about.

CHRIS LOFING: I was interested in being a director and I went to film school at the New York Film Academy here in L.A. During film school, I filmed my thesis film in Fresno to save money because I didn’t have any money. Through that, I met Travis who was living in Fresno. He was just starting to be interested in getting into entertainment and into movies.

TRAVIS CLUFF: I needed to find anyone that was doing anything related to it, and I heard Chris was coming up, and I said, “I can do stunts. I’ll do stunts on his thesis film.” So I did and they were good ones. I didn’t break anything. We met Ryan (Shoos) briefly during the thesis screening and then he came and auditioned for this movie. We ended up meeting at that point in Fresno and I was really impressed. My first question to him was, “How old are you?” He was 19 at the time. It wasn’t so much that he looked young, although that’s a big part of it, but it was the fact that this was the guy telling everyone where to go and what to do and directing and really guiding them. I was so impressed with his drive and focus and his vision. I thought, “Here I am, just this slightly older person who wanted to get involved,” and I said, “I need to listen and pay attention to this guy because he knows exactly what he wants and I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while.” I learned a ton from him.

2. How they came up with the name of their company.

CLUFF: We created a friendship that developed into our company: Tremendum Pictures. We love the word. The word Tremendum means a feeling of awe associated with an overwhelming experience. As you can imagine, that’s what this entire process has been for us. And that’s what we hope our movies will be for people and life will be for people, just an awesome experience.

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Image via Warner Bros.

3. The small cameos they did in their own film.

LOFING: Mine was very brief. I was on the phone right behind Cassidy.

CLUFF: I was Mr. Schwendiman, the drama teacher. I did that good.

4. What inspired the filmmakers to do a horror story.

LOFING: I grew up on John Carpenter stuff and Wes Craven. I loved the old classic slasher movies. So that was a big inspiration for me. But I think mostly for this film it was out of necessity. We didn’t have a lot of money and we knew horror is a great genre to get your foot in the door and just get your experience. Again, we had no resources. We were like, “What can we do with no stars, no money, and a simple idea?”

CLUFF: That was a big part of it. Of course, we were looking for future stars, which I think we have right here. They weren’t known at the time, but they certainly will be, we believe.

5. Why Lofing set the story in the small town of Beatrice, Nebraska.

LOFING: I grew up with this story about a kid who died on stage. My dad told me about it. And then, when we thought about where the movie should take place, we thought it’d be cool to have it set in this small town that no one knows about and it feels almost creepier that way. This town actually does exist, but you’d never be able to find it. There’s something eerie about an old school in a small town and that this story can just disappear. I think that’s why we stuck with it throughout the whole time. We always had it set in Beatrice, and throughout the whole process, we said to Blumhouse and the producers, “Hey, if you want to set it somewhere else, feel free. There’s nothing that specifically needs to make it stay there.” But they were like, “No, let’s just keep it. It’s awesome.”

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

CLUFF: It’s weird because there have been several events even since production and throughout, in Beatrice specifically as well as just around the world, other accidental hangings and other things that are a little bit too eerie for us, but if you look up hangings and things that have to do with Beatrice, you can find them.

LOFING: They’re unusually high in that town. It’s a small town of 12,000 where everybody knows everybody.

DEAN SCHNIDER: You see many haunted house movies, but this is a haunted house movie in a school. If you go online, there are many people who have their own stories at their own schools that have apparitions.

LOFING: Even here [at Hollywood High].

SCHNIDER: Or things exactly like this around the world.

6. How producer Dean Schnider first got involved.

SCHNIDER: I was looking on YouTube and on a couple different blogs, and I ended up seeing about a minute of footage that these guys shot. I thought it was incredible. It was scary. It was bold. It was strange. I ended up just calling them up. They told me they lived in Fresno, which is very far away and in the farmlands. They said they’d just so happen to be in L.A. the next day, which was obviously not true at all. They came down and they showed me some of their footage. I was first looking at it as a producer, and I thought, “This is incredible. Let’s lock arms and go and try to make this the best movie we can.” Then, I started to represent them as a manager as well.

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Image via Warner Bros.

7. How producer Jason Blum entered the picture.

SCHNIDER: We realized this was a micro-budget horror movie and the king of horror movies is Jason Blum. So, we decided to do a test screening with Jason and with us and with a hundred teenagers. We realized at that moment that there was something really special here.

8. What they were looking for in a cast and how they found their actors.

CLUFF: We had limited resources, but a friend of ours, Carollyn DeVore, came down from Fresno and helped us out with casting. She set up some things and we came down here to Hollywood to cast our four main characters. We saw over 200 people in two days. We were looking for people who could relate to the characters automatically, right off the bat, so that it wouldn’t be that difficult of a transition into their character. We knew some of them right away. We had seen so many people that our minds were mush. We had to look back at the videotapes. Ryan Shoos was right away. The second he asked if he could point the camera at himself, we knew he was the one for us. “Can I point this at myself?” We were like, “Yes!” I remembered Reese Mishler as being someone that caught my attention, and Chris was like, “I don’t even remember. We saw so many people. Let’s watch it back.” I showed him the tape of Reese. We saw him again and we knew right away that he was a very strong actor. Pfeifer, she was just too cute to pass up, I think. No, seriously, we thought she was just great. She had a great personality. That’s all there was to it. Cassidy Gifford, on the other hand, oh my gosh, there’s a story there that goes with that.

9. Why Cassidy Gifford was a last minute addition to the cast.

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

CLUFF: We loved Cassidy, and I will tell you that she has been a tremendous actress in this film. I’ll just say it. In the original version of this film, we had a different person. After we had met with Dean and Jason and the folks at Blumhouse and discussed what we were going to do to enhance the movie and to film the things that we wish we could have filmed the first go around when we didn’t have anything, about three weeks before shooting we met with all our four main actors, and one of them had lost a lot of weight and looked very different. It was really a tough decision for us. It was really a hard time for us thinking all is lost and what do we do. That very day when it was apparent that we were going to have to make a change, Beau Swayze at Management 360 said, “I have a girl that I think could be great.” They looked her up online and I said, “In all these pictures, she’s with Kathie Lee Gifford. Are they friends or something?” And they said, “No, that’s her daughter.” I said, “You’re kidding me, right? There’s no way she could be the one we’re looking for at the snap of a finger.” We have to see people to make sure. We met with her that night. Her mom was there, too. It was great doing that. We said, “Let’s still go see some more people.” We did and we ended up coming back to her because she was great. She earned it and she really did a great job.

10. How Gifford first met the filmmakers and auditioned for them.

CASSIDY GIFFORD: It’s funny, because when I first met them, my mom and I were actually on our way to dinner. I got a call from my manager, Beau, and he was like, “Even if you only have five minutes, just come in and say hi.” My mom needed to use the bathroom so of course she came in. She was going to go to the bathroom and I think it ended up we sat for five minutes. It was very brief. I went home. I sent in a taped audition. I didn’t hear for two weeks. With taped auditions, you kind of just wipe your hands of it and hope for the best. You normally think they’re going to go with some other person. Then I went in for a call back with all three of these guys. They all lived together and were like best friends, so I was already nervous for the call back, but we hit it off immediately.

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

CLUFF: She was a great addition. We were shocked. I was on Skype watching that. You were actually here and I was on Skype in Fresno watching that because my wife, Amber, had just had a baby.

11. How the actors related to their respective characters – the similarities and the differences.

RYAN SHOOS: Let’s keep in mind that we started filming this four years ago. I was much more immature then. I’m not that mature now. It was so easy because as soon as you tuned into being that kind of jerky jock making fun of people, it was so easy. And if you’re surrounded by all these people, immediately you have material here and there. So, I just fed off that for days and weeks and apparently years. It kind of seeped into my regular life, and now I feel like I’m turning a little bit and I’m becoming a man.

GIFFORD: I hope I’m not anything like that at all. I guess the way I describe my character is as the girl that we all knew in high school and didn’t necessarily like. Ultimately, the only similarity is I think fear is fear when it comes to human nature. For all of us, even though we all started out as completely different characters, ultimately we’re all faced with the same things and that’s what brings us together. It’s just human nature to be terrified and that doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in completely different ways.

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

PFEIFER BROWN: We were all fresh out of high school. My character was head of the drama department and I can relate to that. I was never a head of the drama department, but I was always very artistic and singing and on the dance team and in school plays. So, I was able to feed off of that relationship. My character was a complete perfectionist and always on time and organized, and I’m not those things in real life. I’m so horrible at being on time. Organization is not one of my strong suits. I’m way more laid back in real life, I’d say, in the classiest way possible. But yes, I could relate to my character because I’m passionate about acting and singing in real life, just as I was in the movie.

REESE MISHLER: I could relate very well to my character. I played football for a while, and I ended up breaking my pelvis so I couldn’t play anymore after that. When I started acting, I was actually very shy as a kid. I got held back in school because I didn’t speak. So, I understood playing somebody who was extremely nervous and had this incredible stage fright. That made total sense to me. I remember when I started doing theater in high school, I was the exact same guy. I was scared to even walk out on stage. I’d hide behind the tree and wait for them to say, “Get out there!” I can totally relate to being this scared kid who has to grow up and learn to face his fears so he can become a real adult, a man.

12. What it was like improvising on a found-footage style shoot.

SHOOS: The improv was great, because we had a lot of time honestly. We were like, “This is the scene we’re going to be working on for the next couple hours. Let’s just do it a bunch of times and we can switch them all up.” The great thing about my character being behind the camera is you can go back and change as many lines as you want. If you think of something funnier a month later, you’re like, “Let’s go put that in. That one’s way better.” The improvisation part was super cool for me.

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

CLUFF: We had a lot of good material from you that we could use on set from various takes that we were able to put in different things. So, we had a lot of good stuff from production from you.

BROWN: I feel like it was a blast, and I wouldn’t have wanted to do it any other way, doing the improvising and the found footage stuff. We would have to do take after take after take since we didn’t have set cameras that were going to shoot exactly what we did and lines that we were going to say word for word. We’d do it and the camera would be unsteady and we’d just have to do it again. The camera would land on the wrong thing and we’d have to do it again. I think that just added to it. We put in a lot of hard, long work to make it look the way it does now because we didn’t have steady cameras shooting the things that needed to be shot. We flew by the seat of our pants.

SCHNIDER: There’s no coverage. Shooting found-footage is much harder than shooting normally. People don’t realize that. The reason was they were broke, had no money, and truly it was the only way to do it, and it came out more raw and authentic.

GIFFORD: I completely agree with them as well. I think it actually is more difficult, contrary to what most people would think. It’s hard to get a scare down just right. Two seconds off could make or break it. You really have to be so specific. Also, Chris and Travis had such a specific vision for it. All of us, after being on set so long together, became friends. For us, we wanted them to get what they wanted, too, even if sometimes we couldn’t see and we got frustrated that it was requiring so many takes. Ultimately, when we finally saw it, we were grateful that the work had been put in.

SHOOS: In the beginning too, the scene pages we were getting were like this long of a description for a three-page scene. They were like, “So, you’re going to walk around for a while and say some funny stuff here and make fun of Reese a little bit, and then this is going to happen.” We were like, “Oh, you’re serious. Oh, okay. Cool, yeah. Let’s go for it.”

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

CLUFF: We essentially had a lot of points that we needed to hit and wanted to hit. And as many of you have said, the camera was its own character. So, we really had to have things land in certain ways. Whereas we would get great performances in several takes, but the timing had to be just right. Chris is really great with timing and pace and leading up to something and the build up to a scare. We would really discuss that a lot and go, “Now did it land just right? Or was it just right here or there?” There were several times where we were like, “We love you guys and your performance was amazing. Do it again.”

13. How they used gallows humor to break the tension on set.

MISHLER: We used it all the time.

CLUFF: It surrounded us everywhere we went. There were several lines. We had to drop a few of them, no pun intended, like “How’s it going?” “Oh, just hanging.” There were several lines. But yes, it was very funny and it was loaded with gallows humor.

14. What it was like working with two directors.

LOFING: When we started filming, Travis and I had only known each other for maybe a year and a half, two years maybe. At the very beginning, I was working more with the actors. And then, throughout the process, Travis became more involved and we became co-directors at a certain point. We would always have different ideas. As Travis said, “The best idea always won.” It was always for the betterment of the movie even if it took a little while to get it figured out and try maybe both ways. Again, the better idea always won and made the movie better for it. I think the actors got through those times, even though they were probably very frustrating and confusing.

CLUFF: Originally, it was Chris who wanted to be a director and he went to school for that. So it was like, “You do more of the directing and I’ll do more of the producing.” Ultimately, we ended up doing enough of both that it made sense that we both did. I would give direction on things. He would do production things. We ultimately realized that we were both doing both so we might as well just say [we’re co-directors]. The only thing he really did a ton more of was all the editing. He did a ton of editing off these great visual effects and just had a really good sense of timing and pacing for a horror movie.

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

SCHNIDER: They basically did every role on the movie and I think Travis’ wife did craft services.

CLUFF: She did. My wife did craft services. She helped pick up. She was a runner from time to time with a two-week old baby in her hand.

BROWN: She did my make-up at one point. Honestly, this is really our first big project. To say “big project” sounds silly because it was done on such a small scale in my eyes going through it. But this is the first thing that I’ll have to compare future projects to, and so in a way, I hope to have two directors in everything. I do from here on out because that’s just what I’m used to now. Chris and Travis were such a team. In the very beginning, we looked to Chris as more of the director, but then the more involved we became in the project, Travis and Chris were like two peas in a pod. They’d bounce ideas off of one another. Travis could direct us in ways that Chris couldn’t explain and vice versa. There would be times that they would have two different visions, and once we started shooting something, Chris would go, “I don’t like that,” and Travis would be like, “No, this is exactly what I wanted,” and Chris was like, “Well let’s just do it again.” If they couldn’t decide on one thing, we would shoot both and then figure out at the end of the day what they liked more. I thought it was super awesome, because if I thought one of their ideas sucked, I’d be like, “I’m on your side, Travis.” And then, if I liked Chris’ idea more, I’d be like, “Yeah. What’s Travis talking about?” It’s kind of like having divorced parents in a way.

MISHLER: I thought it was a very freeing experience having two directors to be able to work with because it takes ego out of the equation. You have two people juggling ideas and that helps you as the actor say, “Okay, well I’m a part of this team as well. Let me put my two cents in. Let’s work as a team here. Let’s try it your way. Let’s try it my way. Let’s try it his way. And we’ll see ultimately what comes out.” You’re not just trying to please one person that whole time. It felt much more like a team effort which was awesome.

GIFFORD: And it’s not like you guys were never not communicating, too. You guys were so close. There was never a time where you didn’t feel you could go to the other person about something that the other one had said. There were times when maybe we needed to shoot right away where Chris would say, “Do this.” Then, he’d walk away and two seconds later Travis would tell you to do the complete opposite. You were never afraid to say, “Wait. Which one should I do?” They were so involved with everything. Even at one point I remember when we were working [with the make-up] on my neck, all of a sudden I felt who I thought was our make-up artist and it was Travis’ hands on my neck. I was like, “You have such large hands.” Travis was fixing it. They just knew what they wanted and what to get out of it. It was always a constant conversation with us included as well. If we had an idea, we always felt like we had the freedom to talk to them and that’s kind of rare.

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

15. How they kept the audience and the actors in the dark to get an honest reaction.

LOFING: I think we tried to do that every single moment we could.

CLUFF: Every time we could. Honestly, there were times when we didn’t try and stuff like that happened anyway. I will say in regards to the opening scene, we had been planning that scene for a year. How were we going to do it? How were we going to trick the audience, and how were we also going to trick the actors on stage? Because we ultimately tricked them as well by dropping Charlie a little bit sooner than even they anticipated. So, every reaction that we saw on camera or experienced on stage was genuinely like, “What just happened? Something must have gone wrong. That wasn’t when they told us it was going to happen.” We never told the audience it was going to happen. So, there is something legitimately wrong here. We really did give that sense of dread and terror. We have a couple of video interviews of audience members afterwards saying, “Oh my gosh, how could you do that to me?” They’re friends so we can do that kind of stuff with them.

LOFING: On set, too, every moment we could we would keep information about certain scenes from the actors so that they wouldn’t know how it would end or this or that. Then, we’d send them into places they hadn’t even been in before. We had several takes, especially of Ryan, where he would be by himself. We’d say, “Hey, just go into that room right there.” He’s like, “What am I going to see?” And we’d say, “Well you’ll find out in a few seconds.” There were plenty of moments like that.

SCHNIDER: What’s so great is that this movie was done outside the system. It was so guerilla that you have the ability to do that. You couldn’t do that if it was Tom Cruise. You couldn’t just randomly prank him, “Oh, you weren’t supposed to be there.” They were able to have fun and shoot 16-hour days and really make it feel like it’s a family-style shot movie. I think it really comes through.

16. The spookiest moments the actors experienced on set.

CLUFF: There were also many instances where weird things happened. We were talking about sending Ryan into places. He ducked down and went through this tiny little place and there was a folding chair in there.

SHOOS: Every time it was upright. It was upright the entire time. Keep in mind that I’m holding the camera myself. They have a transmitter on the camera.

CLUFF: We’re in a totally different place.

SHOOS: I’m in a basement in a boiler room at 3:00 in the morning. Every time I’m going in and out, this chair is upright, and then all of a sudden the chair is down. I’m like, “Who’s been in here?” And they’re all like, “No, copy. It’s good.”

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

LOFING: He’s like, “Guys, guys, guys! Should we cut?” We’re like, “No, keep going. No way.”

SHOOS: Then, it stopped.

CLUFF: Reese also had an experience. Do you want to recount? The attic?

BROWN: This was in the very beginning when you were filming.

MISHLER: This was before we had Edd Lukas (the film’s cinematographer) with us. It’s when me and Pfeiffer are walking through the attic and we’re just on these two little planks, because you’re in the attic. If you go off too far to the right, you’re just in insulation and you fall through the roof. It’s the same thing to the left. We’re going down this hallway, going underneath all the air ducts and that stuff. I remember turning to the right and they yelled, “Cut!” So, I cut the camera and out of the corner of my eye I see this burlap sack just spinning. I’m thinking we’ve already done this 17 times and I do not want to do this again.

BROWN: They were two floors below us. They sent us up to the attic by ourselves and they had a transmitter.

CLUFF: Chris was at the beginning of the run with you. I was downstairs helping my wife with craft services.

MISHLER: I see this thing just lurch up into the air and then it’s gone. Pfeiffer and I ran out of there and we said, “Guys, we just can’t do this.” And they go, “C’mon. Just one more time. It’s going to be okay. We’ll get it in this next shot.” So, we get to the exact same spot. I’m just staring. I’ve got the camera where it needs to be, and I’m looking for this burlap bag. We got it on camera on the sound. We hear this whisper of my name, “Reese!” It was from right here, I swear. I have no idea how they did it or if they did it.

BROWN: It was right in our ears. We were the only ones up there. It was horrifying. We sprinted out of there so fast. I was cut all up and down my arms and knees. We just darted out of there.

CLUFF: They were fine. No humans were harmed during the production of this film.

LOFING: They were possessed for a week. We were done after that though, for that night anyway.

CLUFF: I don’t think I believed it, but we played the tape back and I did hear the whisper.

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Image via Warner Bros.

 

BROWN: It was right in our ear.

MISHLER: I couldn’t sleep for about a week after that.

17. How Cluff and Lofing found the look for Charlie.

LOFING: We had a costume designer helping us out early on when we shot our original teaser experiment trailer. I was looking online at what do executioners typically look like. We wanted something along those lines, but unique as well, and something cheap because we had no money. We were like, “Let’s just throw a sack on his head and see what that does.” But this costumer designer we had added this stitching and added these little details. And in post, I would enhance certain things to make it even more dramatic and stark. That was just the look we ended up with.

CLUFF: We definitely wanted something unique and different. I mean, that’s the challenge. It’s all been done before, so the challenge was to make it new and unique. We had early sketches and then she helped us tie in the ultimate look and the noose. We hadn’t known of that to have been done. Again, we’re wholesome guys not terribly into gore and that kind of stuff. So, we thought about the rope. We could just make a noose so eerie. We ultimately wanted to try to do that and that’s how our version of Charlie was created.

18. How they were aiming for a PG-13 rating, but got an R rating instead.

CLUFF: Chris and I were crafting the most wholesome scares. We were going for no blood and guts. We really were shooting for a PG-13. But the fact is, the movie was too scary for that apparently.

SCHNIDER: We got the R rating for being too scary.

CLUFF: That’s literally it. It’s very cool. We take it as a compliment that we outdid ourselves on the scares.

SCHNIDER: We all wanted it to be PG-13 in the sense that these guys tend to prefer watching PG-13. There’s no gore or nudity or drugs. There’s no violence. We were truly surprised. New Line, Jason, and we were all thrilled that it was R because it was R for really being too terrifying. We think these guys really outdid themselves.

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Image via Warner Bros.

19. Cassidy’s F-bomb.

CLUFF: One thing that was funny is that the least likely person to cuss in this group is Cassidy and we actually kept her F-bomb. That’s the one F-bomb in the movie.

GIFFORD: The first night I tripped. I just ate it and fell face down on the steps. I was so nervous.

LOFING: She starts laughing and apologizing because the F-word slipped, but it looked right on camera.

GIFFORD: So they kept it, but I was mortified. I thought you two were going to hate me forever. You will never hear these guys say anything bad in the entire world. They’re like the most endearing, wonderful people on the planet. And then, of course, I’m already the new kid, and I slid right on camera on our first take on the first night.

CLUFF: It made the trailer and it made the movie.

20. Their reaction to the film landing with Warner Bros.

SCHNIDER: These guys were working for barely any money. They were coming back and forth to Fresno. They were going into the studio. It was really a passion project for everyone. Nobody ever, ever, ever thought that it would end up with Warner Bros.

CLUFF: There was always the hope.

SCHNIDER: There was always the hope, but it was an amazing ride!

CLUFF: It is beyond what we imagined. It is awesome! The Gallows is now in theaters.