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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