Verdict
Summary
A good enough concept might’ve made another movie called The Hangman more enjoyable than this movie called The Hangman ended up being. Right from the start, the movie takes a wonky wrong turn when it decides to be a racist, supernatural version of Deliverance with an innocent black protagonist having to deal with a bunch of vile antagonists as well as the inevitable confrontation he eventually has with the dreaded Hangman, who ends up being a mere cameo-type baddie who only has a couple of quick moments to enliven the already dull and listless film named after him.
Plot:
A father / son bonding trip turns into a nightmare when the son disappears in The Hangman’s territory.
Review:
Leon (LeJon Woods) and his teen son Jesse (Mar Cellus) go on a father / son bonding camping trip, but they choose the wrong wilderness to go camping in. Being an African American family, they immediately put targets on themselves when they venture into the backwoods of Appalachia where the hillbillies and Confederate flag-waving cuckoos roam around in packs with their rifles and six-shooters strapped and packed. They also end up in an area (one of several throughout the world, according to a pretext in the first moments of the film) where there’s a gateway to hell, and Leon and Jesse happen to make camp right in the middle of the territory where a supernatural urban legend killer called The Hangman chooses his victims to drag down to hell. During the night, Jesse disappears from his tent, leaving Leon to frantically search around the area for him, leading him straight into the crosshairs of a racist hillbilly and his girlfriend who make him kneel before them, and when Leon panics and runs, they start shooting at him. Leon ends up getting captured by a cult of immortal weirdoes who’ve made a pact with The Hangman, but luckily Leon has an ally in a woman who has also been captured by the same group but manages to break free and help him escape and somehow find his son before The Hangman crawls out of hell to drag more victims down back with him.
A good enough concept might’ve made another movie called The Hangman more enjoyable than this movie called The Hangman ended up being. Right from the start, the movie takes a wonky wrong turn when it decides to be a racist, supernatural version of Deliverance with an innocent black protagonist having to deal with a bunch of vile antagonists as well as the inevitable confrontation he eventually has with the dreaded Hangman, who ends up being a mere cameo-type baddie who only has a couple of quick moments to enliven the already dull and listless film named after him. LeJon Woods co-wrote this with this film’s director Bruce Wemple, and while Woods does a solid job in the acting department, he helped to create a really clichéd script here that never really explains why on earth his character decides to camp out in an area where he should know better not to camp. Pulling the whole racist card in a movie like this is the wrong move; a smarter, savvier plot would’ve avoided all that and flipped our expectations around and actually surprised us with something much more interesting.
Epic Pictures and Dread’s brand-new Blu-ray release of The Hangman (which got a brief theatrical run earlier this year) is numbered #51 on the spine as part of their Dread series, and it comes with two audio commentaries, a making-of feature, a bonus interview with Leon Woods, and a deleted scene.
