In 2015, Blumhouse released The Gallows, in which a few teens film themselves breaking into their school to sabotage the production of a cursed play. The film cost $100,000 and made $43 million, so a sequel was quickly put into production. Three years after it was filmed in secret, Blumhouse is releasing The Gallows Act II in time for Halloween, and…like most kid’s trick-or-treating hordes, it’s a mixed bag.

Auna Rue (Ema Horvath) dreams of seeing her name in lights. She moves in with her older sister so she can attend a prestigious high school with a track record for creating Broadway stars. To boost her fledgling YouTube subscriber count, she tries a new version of the viral Charlie Charlie Challenge, in which she reads from The Gallows stage play and evokes the sinister spirit of Charlie Grimille, a.k.a. The Hangman.

YouTube footage plays an important role in the narrative, but the film drops the found footage format for the most part. It’s a great way to connect to the first entry without being restrained by the format.

At first, Auna Rue reminded me of a stock character out of Glee: The big dreamer who nobody believes in. Yawn. But then she tries a monologue and we learn she’s not talented and she’s kind of a hot mess. Once that turn hit, her character immediately clicked with me. In other movies, she’d be the awkward best friend, but Auna Rue’s been elevated to central character here.

For good and bad.

The movie looks great, but the editing is extremely frustrating. Jump scares aren’t given any time to breathe. It was so bad in places, I was still trying to process what was going on while they cut to the next shot.

I like knowing the rules of the movie world I’m watching. Freddy Krueger gets you in your sleep. That makes perfect sense and lets the audience in on the game. We can imagine how we’d fight Freddy, what it would be like to be sleep deprived. If Charlie was after me, I don’t know what I’d do because there’s no rules to how he operates. He kind of stalks and gives startling visions to people who read his old stage play, I guess? Oh and he—or the play itself…maybe?—can possess you, but only to make you a better actor? Oh, and he can also mess with a select few other people who didn’t read the play but are near someone who did? The Hangman looks great and is used fairly effectively, but to quote so many student actors, “What’s his motivation?”

No spoilers, but I will say the ending left me confused in a very unsatisfying way. I’m fine with what happens, but it’s given no explanation and left a sour after taste I wasn’t expecting.

All these frustrations are only worsened by the fact that there’s a lot that does work. It’s well shot, the acting’s solid, Auna Rue really works for me. There’s a bit with bed sheets that was incredibly cool. But the jump scares are a wasted potential. They’d work if they weren’t immediately neglected. It feels like filmmakers Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing (returning from the first movie) had some great visual frights that didn’t fit the narrative, so they used them anyway as increasingly ineffective hallucinations.

I can’t help but think how cool it would have been if Auna Rue had a friend group and each of them gets picked off one at a time by the many fake-outs that are already in the film.

I really wanted to like what The Gallows Act II could have been. Instead of a slasher, The Gallows Act II spends most of its runtime slowly terrorizing a girl who only wants to be liked. I guess I’ll leave it at this: the moral of The Gallows Act II is to always reach for your dreams…

Unless you’re not talented.