The Hangman

Written and starring the same person? Recipe for failure. It's very rare someone in this field can do more than one function. Here we have the writer also playing the main character. Well he can't act. At least not in this film. And the story was all over the place and garbage, so clearly he can't write either. And that seems to be a common theme when people try to do too much in show business.

But the movie, well it isn't good. A black man and his son going to the Appalachian for camping? Pause. We not doing that. First off, camping is not one of our go to activities. Second, we know better than to go out to racism, the place. The cringy bonding in the beginning should've told me turn this movie off. But then we meet the racist locals. Sigh. This has been done to death. It's played out. Then there's this hangman. It was more like an after thought. If they had focused more on that and the cult, and cut out the racism stuff, which added nothing, then maybe this could've been a 3 star instead of 1.

The Hangman (2024), directed by Bruce Wemple, is a horror film that collapses under the weight of its own shortcomings, emerging as a masterclass in what not to do in filmmaking. The story follows a father and son on a camping trip in Appalachia that turns deadly when they encounter a cult and a demonic entity, but the execution is a mess. The acting is uniformly dreadful, with the lead actor's performance standing out as the worst, marked by bizarre facial expressions that clash jarringly with the intended emotions of each scene. The camera's relentless zooming in on the lead's face only amplifies this disconnect, making every awkward grimace painfully unavoidable. A secondary villain, stereotyped with a Confederate flag logo on his hat and truck, delivers a performance so wooden it feels like a caricature, while a priest character somehow manages to be even worse, with dialogue and delivery that border on unintentional comedy.

The screenplay is a chaotic jumble, tossing in racial undertones, cult horror, and father-son drama without cohesion or depth, and the direction fails to salvage it, with poor pacing and baffling choices like the overuse of close-ups. Reviews suggest a low-budget production, but no amount of money could fix the fundamentally bad writing, acting, and directing. The Hangman is a cinematic misfire that tries to be a horror but ends up a frustrating, laughably bad ordeal.

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.

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.

This is a truly terrible film. The acting is bad the story is bad, the audio is sometime out of sync with characters speech.

The main character is useless all in all a bad film. Do not waste your time with this.

The story does not make sense, I found myself losing track initially then being incredibly bored and the mind wondering, the film does not capture you/ keep you hooked. It is all in all a really terrible film.

The acting is ridiculous, I would strongly advise people to watch a different film.

I cannot understand how such a bad film has 4/5 stars on amazon reviews. It should be noted i don't often leave reviews for films, but this was just so terribly I had to worn others!