Much curiosity surrounding The Gallows is to see if Cassidy Gifford, the 22-year-old daughter of NFL legend Frank and longtime Regis Philbin sidekick Kathie Lee, can emote. The answer: She can, but only poorly, so move along to a better movie, i.e. virtually any other movie. The only thing worse than a horror film that doesn’t raise the pulse is the one that puts you to sleep, and The Gallows is a strong contender as this millennium’s dullest of offerings yet, found-footage or otherwise.

In 1983, students of a small-town high school in Nebraska mounted a production of the titular play, during which the leading man was accidentally, fatally hanged. Twenty years later, the school tries again — too soon! — this time with a jock (Reese Mishler) assuming the lead. Despite his crush for his leading lady (Pfeifer Brown), he develops serious butterflies as opening night approaches, so his best bro (annoying Ryan Shoos) proposes a late-night sabotage of the set, entering through a door that everyone knows is broken.

So break in they do, with Gifford’s bitchy Cassidy in tow. (Why do so many found-footage films name their characters after the actual actors, your editor asks rhetorically.) However, clad in a hangman’s mask that is glimpsed too little to elicit shivers, the spirit of the dead performer appears to haunt the stage, not to mention the rest of the school grounds. In general, the kids are portrayed (purposely and, Gifford excepted, by unknowns) as self-absorbed brats, leaving the viewer to feel the quicker they are choked to death, the better.

With no true hero, there are no real stakes; therefore, barely any structure exists on which to hang a feature film, yet Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing have done it anyway. The directing duo’s script, wafer-thin, is all buildup to a conclusion that qualifies as foregone before frame one hits your eyes. If you’ve ever wanted to watch a few asshole teens yell at one another as they run around the darkened halls of school for an hour, The Gallows is your movie. Godspeed, and be warned: It’s as dramatic as watching someone open a locker … which we see happen, by the way. —Rod Lott

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To enjoy the remake of Poltergeist — and yes, it can be done — you have to distance yourself from feelings over the 1982 original, a classic of contemporary horror cinema. Granted, that’s difficult to do when the new version keeps calling back to the original version, such as when the families discuss the neighborhood being built over a former cemetery: “At least it isn’t an Indian burial ground!”

And at least director Gil Kenan — moving fluidly from an animated Monster House to a live-action one — tries to do enough things differently while still bearing resemblance to a beloved film. Whereas the Freelings were pot-smoking Reaganites, the Bowens (Moon’s Sam Rockwell and The Watch’s Rosemarie DeWitt) are jobless, overextended victims of the housing collapse and Great Recession. They’ve barely settled with their kids in a new-to-them home in the suburbs when their youngest, Madison (Kennedi Clements, Jingle All the Way 2), starts talking to the bedroom closet. The “TV people” have become “lost people,” and not only do these spirits fill the basement ankle-deep in Amityville-brand sewage and fuck with the WiFi signal (every child’s worst nightmare), but also abscond with Madison (every parent’s worst nightmare), sucking her into a ghostly netherworld.

Standing in for — and nearly 2 feet taller than — Zelda Rubinstein is Jared Harris (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) as the paranormal professional called in to assist the desperate family; updated for these times, he’s the reality-TV star of a series called Haunted House Cleaners, for which his sign-off of “This house is clean!” has become such a catchphrase, it has earned its own hashtag. He also uses a drone for this assignment. Such concessions for the Internet age are inevitable and goofy, but forgivable if the movie delivered jolts. It does — not in the style of cul-de-sac camaraderie established by director Tobe Hooper and screenwriter/producer Steven Spielberg in ’82 — but in the carnival-spookshow manner associated with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures banner, under which this Poltergeist was unleashed, promising a good time vs. great art. I actually found myself tensing up during the trip through the other dimension, and a bit with a drill is the kind of mischievous menace Raimi himself is keen on employing in his own scare films.

None of the three Bowen children makes an impression beyond middling, but Rockwell and particularly DeWitt (whose ponytail I could watch flop for days) are ideal and believable as the shell-shocked and overstressed marrieds just doing the best that they can. That includes enduring the questions of their middle child (Kyle Catlett, TV’s The Following): “Why would why somebody have a box of clowns?” Clearly the kid never saw the first one! —Rod Lott

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Two months after a car crash kills their son, Anne (Barbara Crampton, You’re Next) and Paul (Andrew Sensenig, Don’t Look in the Basement 2) move from the city — but not their grief — and into an old house in a snowy, sleepy New England town. Almost immediately, strange stuff happens, leading an emotionally fragile Anne to believe his ghost is haunting them.

He’s not, but something definitely is at work, because that’s what happens when you move into an ornate structure that operated as a funeral home in the late 19th century — especially one that sold off its inventory, and I don’t mean coffins. Also cluing Anne in: a note covertly pressed into her palm upon meeting a neighbor, reading, “THE HOUSE NEEDS A FAMILY — GET OUT!” Why, it’s enough to invite their kooky hippie friends with supposed psychic abilities (Mars Attacks’ Lisa Marie and Late Phases’ Larry Fessenden) up for a visit and séance, and enough to send viewers to a state of utter impatience.

For all its arthouse-horror trappings, We Are Still Here is as predictable and cliché-ridden as any mainstream fright film. For just one example, our foursome of friends enters a local bar and grill, only to have its drinkers and diners immediately fall into a frown-filled hush of suspicious disapproval — a conceit that dates back to ye olde Universal Monsters. Writer and debuting director Ted Geoghegan also can’t keep his own mythology straight; whereas in one scene a character explains with utmost authority that the house contains a darkness that rises “every 30 years like clockwork,” he later settles for “every 30 years or so.”

At least that “darkness” is well-depicted by beings of glowing ash and milky eyes. At least Crampton has reached an age where she is allowed to act instead of just disrobe. And at least the movie carries an aura like its sinister abode — unfortunately, it’s one rather cold to the touch. —Rod Lott

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There are two things the Aussies do better than anyone else: deep-frying an entire onion and, perhaps a bit healthier, post-apocalyptic vehicular manslaughter. And while they might not come with a spicy dipping sauce, these futuristic glimpses at highway hellfire have changed an entire subgenre of film for almost four decades now.

For those still riding on the chrome-huffing high of Mad Max: Fury Road, here’s the turbo-charged living dead spin on the end of the world, Wyrmwood. Too bad that after a hi-octane, bang-up intro, the thing just sputters and fizzles out like the cheap lemon it is.

What we got here is a trio of diverse pals, clad in sporting gear and desperately trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, as you do. The plague that has created the walking dead, however, has also managed to nonsensically render all fuel useless. Meanwhile, across town, a mad doctor is experimenting on the reanimated corpses, as well as the few random living survivors, including the sister of one of the aforementioned three amigos.

In a real unique turn of events, not only is said sister turned into a half-living, half-dead being, but one that has complete mental control over all the shambling decayers in her immediate area. And, if that weren’t a big enough twist, turns out that zombies can now be used for fuel, which provides some great comedic relief, but does little to move forward an already convoluted tale.

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is paved with good intentions, but, in the process of trying to be so original, director Kiah Roache-Turner forgot the most important element: a living, breathing plot to back all of this creativity up. Still, it’s got enough cool-looking set pieces and thoughtful action sequences that any viewer low on juice will be entertained enough to keep their foot off the breaks and finger off the fast-forward. —Louis Fowler

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In 1985, when I was a 14, all I wanted for Christmas was Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew, then fresh in hardback. I got it, and the cold winter nights were perfect for reading “The Mist,” the eerie first of 22 stories in the collection.

But really, what were the Weinstein brothers thinking in releasing Frank Darabont’s The Mist movie over a Thanksgiving weekend? While it is mostly faithful to King’s original, 100ish-page story, its drastically different ending doesn’t exactly scream “holiday family motion-picture experience.”

Thomas Jane (2004’s The Punisher) stars as David Drayton, an artist and all-around family man living the quiet life in coastal Maine until the night a freak storm tears the outdoors to hell. The next day, facing no electricity, he and his little boy head to town to pick up food and supplies at the Food House grocery store, leaving his wife back at the house.

Given the storm, the store is packed with people of all backgrounds, which will make for a real pressure cooker (mostly thanks to the apocalyptic religious zealot played by Mystic River’s Marcia Gay Harden) once the eerie fog envelopes the place and traps them inside. Despite attempts at escape, gooey tentacles and oversized insects from the mist thwart those desperate plans. But what’s really in there? And will anyone who sees live to tell?

It’s the third go-round for Darabont in King features, having written and directed 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption and 1999’s The Green Mile prior. Hey, at least this one gets out of prison … or does it? People trapped in a grocery store — may as well be San Quentin.

Differences to the story are mostly subtle, except for the biggest change of all: the ending. I won’t spoil it for you, but it brings to mind a point Jeffery Deaver made in the introduction to his 2003 Twisted anthology of short stories: “Authors have a contract with their readers and I think too much of mine to have them invest their time, money and emotion in a full-length novel, only to leave them disappointed by a grim, cynical ending. With a thirty-page short story, however, all bets are off.”

True, this is a motion picture, not a work of literature, but its extended running time makes it the equivalent of a novel, and Darabont crosses the line into cruel cynicism. Up until that point, I was with The Mist all the way — a suspenseful, purposely paced horror thriller that delivers some old-school, B-movie scares. —Rod Lott

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