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.

 

Directed by Bruce Wemple, who co-writes the script with leading man LeJon Woods, The Hangman tells the tired tale of an evil spirit born of hate and pain, summoned by a local cult deep in rural Appalachia. The mythology of this creature is rather murky and somehow the cult is using the Hangman’s killings to lengthen their own lives. There is a line-up of usual craziness involving a priest and a drug dealer and a MAGA Kool-Aid drinker complete with the Bars and Stars flapping on his pickup. But what makes The Hangman interesting is the father-and-son drama between Leon (LeJon Woods) and Jesse (Mar Cellus). Leon is a widower and he wants  to reconnect with his teen son before Jesse gets too old and heads out to college. Leon plans a camping trip but soon after pitching tent, Jesse is abducted, leaving Leon to frantically chase him down. 

 

The true horror of the movie is quickly understood. This is not the presence of the Spirit Halloween-costumed Hangman that is panic-inducing, but rather, Leon’s plight in rescuing his son. The human drama builds as the cornball horror surprisingly lessens. One of the most terrifying scenes in the movie is not Leon’s denouement against the demonic villain, but rather his encounter with the MAGA hillbilly. Leon, a Black man, quickly realizes he ain’t in the big city once a skinny white man with a greasy mullet and an extremely large shotgun crosses his path. Leon, however, is resourceful, and if anything, The Hangman plays to that resourcefulness. Actor LeJon Woods is outstanding in this role, too. He is charismatic, believable, and, when the time is right, even gets to throw down some fun one-liners.

 

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, and even the presence of the cult, 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.

 

While Leon must work his way through Hell, be that metaphysical or not, his journey as a father is powerfully more heroic than his eventual showdown with the Hangman.  

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