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.

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.

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.

Leon is taking his son Jesse on a camping trip in West Virginia. He wakes up next morning to find his son missing. He navigates a racist local population and a demonic presence killing his victims with his ropes.

I am fine with a low budget Deliverance style trip in hillbilly country. That part actually works at a low budget level. The lead is a functional average looking dad. The movie struggles when it tries to do high intensity supernatural visuals. They don't have the budget or the camera skills to do it right. It looks cheap and not even in a fun camp way. One understands the limitations.

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.