The Hangman

Besides a few dead bodies and some screaming, there is nothing about this that resembles a horror movie. The overt racial undertones really destroy the story, and there's nothing subtle about it. All white people bad - got it.

The acting is awful, the dialogue is laughable - a son asks his widower father if he's gay because he's not dating(?)The accents are inconsistent and nonsensical. And by the way, I can't remember one scene or sequence in the movie that actually made me feel scared, suspenseful, or care about any of the characters at all.

Honestly the whole insane racism ala Appalachia theme in movies is really tired. Horrible movie. Do not watch.

Right, well the movie's cover and title was enough to make me stop and take notice of this movie. Sure, I had never heard about this movie from director Bruce Wemple, so I didn't know what I was in for. But it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen was more than sufficient to make me sit down and give it a go.

Writers Bruce Wemple and LeJon Woods put together a rather weak storyline that didn't prove neither overly entertaining nor scary. So sitting through 88 minutes of this movie was a bit of a struggle. I must admit that I had hoped for a bit more, given the movie's cover.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but it should be said that while the storyline was rubbish, then the acting performances were actually fair.

Not a particularly great horror movie, nor a movie that will ever grace my screen a second time, because it was boring enough sitting through it the first time.

Visually then "The Hangman" didn't impress either. The movie made use of very little special effects. And as for the creature seen on the movie's cover, well don't get your hopes up, as it is hardly in the movie at all.

The movie's cover was actually the best part about the entire ordeal.

If you enjoy horror movies, I wouldn't recommend you to waste 88 minutes on watching this 2024 movie from director Bruce Wemple.

My rating of "The Hangman" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.

Every decision made by the writers, director, camera operators, actors and their characters was the worst possible decision. It was so bad in every way possible. It's like they asked an improv audience to suggest a genre, sub genre, tone, and a new character to introduce for 3 acts and they just put all of it together to make a mashup of all the ideas.

Or maybe two interns carrying two separate scripts were rushing down a hall and ran into each other, dropping the stacks of papers and when they picked all of the pages up, they had mixed both scripts together and this was the one that got produced.

When it comes to modest budget VOD horror flicks, Dread knows its audience. Get a few psychotic characters, plug in some red LEDs, build a fire, throw around a little karo-red blood, and everyone has a screaming good time. Dread's latest VOD release, The Hangman, fulfills all these requirements - minimally. What makes The Hangman at all watchable is the clever crime drama centering on a missing teen that easily slips in-between the pseudo-screams.

While the plight of the father and son deepens the A-story, the demonic tale of the Hangman is abruptly forgotten. When the supernatural menace eventually returns, the story of the Hangman's murderous quest becomes not only confusingly circular but almost completely unnecessary. In fact, The Hangman lacks any true genre scares and possesses startling sparse on-screen violence. The eponymous villain barely lives up to his name, settling instead to casting small nooses for binding people down as if he was a not-so-friendly Appalachian neighborhood web-slinger.

Hardcore horror fans might disagree.

The Hangman apologetically fits within the genre and strangles out the minimally-appropriate material with its very last breath while ignoring the true horror of scary Appalachian drug dealers.

I've seen many horrors in my lifetime, some ok and most pretty bad, but this is up there with the worst... I have no idea how this has even made it onto Amazon but I think it needs to be taken down. It's all over the place, has no progression, just jumps straight into the "action" and that may sound like a good thing but it really isn't. If you watch the trailer before you waste your time, you'll realise that Bruce wemple can't even understand what a trailer is meant to be, never mind directing a movie, clearly someone with money and no clue how to direct. If you ever see this guys name as the director of the movie your about to watch, just skip and move on because it's clueless direction from start to finish. What a joke, should be under the comedy genre.