The Hangman

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.

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!

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.

This movie can't decided what it is about. And it throws every kitchen sink into the toilet and flushes the toilet and the kitchen sinks all swirl in the bowl and get jammed and the plumber that comes to fix this cinematic mess of a backed-up sewer movie isn't very good with plumbing or film-making.

The main conceit is that a dad and son go camping in the worst possible place and run into the worst possible people with the worst beliefs, side hustles and folklore imaginable.

The other open premise of the movie is that there is a backwoods cult of lowlifes worshiping a demon that hangs people for their sins. And the rest of the plot points involving said demon make no sense in a fairly tone-deaf manner what with racial makeup of the two leads.

Sometimes the movie is dead serious about itself. Other times it is trying to play for laughs. It unsuccessfully tries to be supernatural horror, an overwrought social drama and a father/son buddy comedy.

But it is mostly annoying. And nothing about it is cohesive or interesting.

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.