Chattanooga Film Festival 2026 Coverage
On Gallows Hill review
A vampire movie about the challenges of being in your 20s.
Festival movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
On Gallows Hill
Directed by Ed Shimborske
Written by Ed Shimborske
Starring Rohan Maletira and Jill Pierangeli
On Gallows Hill Review
Vampire movies and I don’t mix very well together. For every Sinners, Near Dark and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night out there…there are a dozen of them that don’t work for me at all. While I can appreciate the craft in a movie like Nosferatu or…Nosferatu…I grew tired of the vampire tropes a long time ago. It’s with that understanding that I pressed play on the next offering from this year’s Chattanooga Film Festival, On Gallows Hill. Regardless of my own gripes with the popular subgenre of horror…I can set them aside and accept a movie for what it offers.
Here’s the twist…I actually like On Gallows Hill. It isn’t going to usher in a new wave of excitement for vampire movies within me…but it offered up enough interesting stuff to keep me on board with it. On Gallows Hill uses its vampire story as a parable for the struggles faced in your 20s. Essentially, a lot of work, drinking and complex relationships. It’s a metaphor that works quite well. Especially because On Gallows Hill has some nice twists on vampire lore to offer up.
Matt (Rohan Maletira) is our window into the world of vampire in On Gallows Hill. He gets bitten at the beginning of the story and has to learn to survive as a vampire as the story unfolds. The most important things he needs to learn are that he has to drink blood within ten days or he turns into a husk. Unfortunately, you can also only feed upon people with the same blood type…and Matt is O negative. If they haven’t fed by the tenth day…they go a bit feral on day nine.
Those are some cool lore additions to introduce. There’s so much vampire media out there that I’m sure On Gallows Hill didn’t invent them all…but they really work for the story they’re telling. Matt finds a lot of this out from a conversation with his maker. He also accidentally turns into a bat at one point…which is pretty funny. The practical effect is hit and miss but there is a certain charm to it. To add another trouble to his list…there’s a vampire hunter roaming the streets.
Aside from the vampirism…Matt’s life is pretty typical of a guy in his 20s. He meets Annie (Jill Pierangeli). He gets a job…in a “blood room” from the coven of vampires another vamp introduces him to. Ok…maybe it’s not exactly like a typical guy in their 20s…but who can’t relate to having a weird job they don’t like very much? In this case…that means draining the blood from corpses. Which doesn’t feel any less disturbing than when I worked at McDonald’s to be honest.
What works best about On Gallows Hill is that we get to discover how its vampire societies work right along with Matt. This isn’t a movie that intends to scare you…it’s one that tries to draw you into its unique little world that is hiding in the shadows. Matt feels lost and lonely and hopeless and hungry. Like I said…it’s a really good metaphor.
On Gallows Hill has a nice momentum that it sustains throughout the film. Matt is on a ticking clock within a world he doesn’t understand. Finding that O negative blood isn’t going to be easy…and the hunger only grows as day 10 approaches. Being in your 20s is tough business. On Gallows Hill marries it to a pretty cool vampire lore and delivers one of the more interesting vampire movies I’ve seen in a while. It might not be enough to make me rethink my stance on the entire subgenre…but it was enough to make On Gallows Hill a decent watch.
Scare Value
On Gallows Hill doesn’t rewrite everything that I think about vampire stories…but it does write itself one that I found interesting. It uses vampire lore to raise the stakes (pardon my pun) on the already desperate and lost feeling situations involved with being a young adult. The need to feed on something that isn’t easy to find…well…that just makes the whole process a bit more exciting. On Gallows Hill is a thoughtful and entertaining bite out of the vampire apple.
