Gallowwalkers is a 2012 American Western horror film written and directed by Andrew Goth, and starring Wesley Snipes, Kevin Howarth, Riley Smith, Tanit Phoenix, Patrick Bergin, and Diamond Dallas Page. Due to Wesley Snipes’ tax problems the film went through many changes and delays, and was completed in 2010.
The surface of Gallowwalkers gives it the appearance of being a genre-blending mix of Wild West action coupled with American Western horror. And while those elements are included, everything is crushed under a script that generates unintended laughs when it is not busy bringing fingernails to the scalp with a confusing story and a nonsensical plot structure.
Legend has it that when Nostradamus prophesized his infamous quatrains, he threw them into the air and published them in the order in which they landed, instead of the order in which they were written. The purpose was reportedly so that deciphering their meanings and chronology would be more challenging for academics. Taking a page from the French seer’s playbook, the filmmakers here went with a similar approach in constructing the scenes for Gallowwalkers. The sequence of events, character appearances, and revelatory dialogue exchanges are in direct competition with each other to see which can be the most random, vague, and indecipherable.
Wesley Snipes is Aman, a cursed gunman out for a second time to avenge the evil done to his beloved. The first time, Aman was able to punish Kansa and his band of rapists via the manner in which outlaws typically dispense their brand of justice. But a deal made between Aman’s mother and The Devil to save Aman’s life came with a curse. Those who die by Aman’s hand are doomed to be resurrected as creatures called “gallowwalkers.” Now Aman has to kill them all again, and make sure that they remain dead once and for all.
