Hell House LLC

I approach all modern found footage movies with a sense of cynicism nowadays - mainly because they're usually atrocious - and going by the trailer, cover and even title of this film, it was no exception. But what a pleasant surprise! Great twists, a real and genuine sense of dread in the hotel and intense up until the end.

Location was perfect, fairly rural and run down but without giving in to the cliché, 'cabin in the woods' scenario. Great use of Halloween props for creating some ultra-spooky scenes and a decent enough original storyline to keep the viewer interested throughout.

Not perfect by any stretch, I'm still a bit muddled as to what actually happened in the house but otherwise highly recommended.

Hell House LLC has a lot of pretty decent scares, but the actual story of the movie doesn't hold up.

This is a found footage movie that tells the story of some down-on-their-luck New Yorkers scouting out a new location for their Halloween haunt business in the made-up town of Abbadon. There, they buy an abandoned hotel with a dark history. Even though something is clearly wrong with the location, the crew pushes on towards opening night, where a terrible event claims many lives.

If that sounds like a spoiler, it's not, really. The movie opens laying all of this out, and it's more about the steps that happen along the way.

The movie excels at spooky atmosphere. Rather than get in your face with ghouls or excessive amounts of CGI, Hell House plays things subtle. It might be as simple as a shadow in the hallway, or things changing places when you look away for just a second, but it succeeds in being very unsettling without going overboard.

That being said, some of the production is a little sloppy, particularly in the sound design department. Being found footage, a lot of the sound in this movie has a very distinct style to it -- built-in microphones on handheld cameras. It's a little bit tinny, there's room echo, and so on. Which makes it SUPER OBVIOUS when they dub in new sounds during post production, because the dubbed sounds are ten times clearer than the microphone's source audio and definitely weren't present during filming. Not a deal breaker, but a minor annoyance.

The real problem is when Hell House tries to tell its story. The actors do okay, but this movie is jam packed full of horror movie logic where everybody involved spontaneously forgets about common sense. Being found footage, the camera is always rolling, but the condemning evidence is always either handwaved away for convenient reasons, or outright ignored entirely. These are ignorant characters doing dumb things, because if they were too smart and recognized the danger then we wouldn't have a movie to watch.

There's also not a lot in the way of character development. Real documentaries spend time helping us get to know the people involved, but that's glossed over here. We get little snippets of things early on, like how some people are known for arguing, or how the group had a bad time at their last haunt location in Queens. It largely does not matter, and there's zero sense of who these people were before they arrived at Abbadon. I never even knew most of their names.

Without getting in to spoiler territory, I also found the ending to be sort of a letdown. The movie is great with subtle scares, but the ending ends up being more confusing and underwhelming than scary. It's this weird half-step of showing you what happened, but only the least important parts.

I guess I did not hate my time with Hell House. It's fine, and mainly exists as a vehicle to deliver spooky moments. Just don't think about it too much harder than that.

Just when you think the found footage horror film has nowhere left to go, the well now running dry after granddaddy of them all The Blair Witch Project's release in 1999, along comes a low-budget gem like Hell House LLC.

Directed by debut feature length filmmaker Stephen Cognetti, who edited the film over a course of a full calendar year as he worked another full time job, Hell House may on paper seem like a tough sell but due to the films non-reliance on jump scares and instead a focus on subtle build ups and solid character design and growth, Cognetti's film is an effective example of both low-budget filmmaking and the found footage style of horror film's that has been going through a rough time over the last few years.

Setting up a slow build scenario, Cognetti's film draws the audience in as we witness a haunted house crew set-up for a new season of Halloween haunts and scares in a decrepit old hotel building on the outside country surrounds of New York City.

Mixing in talking head interviews with journalists and eye-witnesses of a night of terror and death on the Hell House's opening night, the film feels like a lived in and realistic experience as the hotel premise's true nature begins to be unravelled by the production crew and we the audience begin to understand the horrors that the hotel harbors within its bricks and motor design.

Most impressive for a film of this nature and budget, Hell House has great production values and extremely solid acting turns which makes the haunted house feel alive and real and rare for a film of this ilk, the characters here are ones we grow to care for and are characters that feel cut from the real world, unlike many found footage film's where characters feel unrealistic and most tellingly, uninvolving.

Not everything in Hell House works to the standard it sets, a few plot contrivances and some obvious budget constraints hamper a few scenes and situations but with a focus on the practical (the Hell House is an impressively constructed set-piece for the film) and the stories engaging design, Hell House is an enjoyable and frequently haunting piece of horror filmmaking.

Final Say –

One of recent memories great little horror surprises, Hell House LLC is the newest found footage experience you didn't know you needed and a splendid calling card for its director Stephen Cognetti, a director who quite clearly is an astute student of the genre and a filmmaker to keep a very close eye on.

3 ½ creepy pianist's out of 5

Hell House LLC was probably the biggest surprise for me in the found footage genre. The movie flowed well throughout the whole duration, not becoming too boring like some horror movies often do. While there is a lack of character development at the start, they begin to flesh out later on in the film. The story seems believable as well, while some movies may explore a haunted area "because they want to see what is there", Hell House LLC sets up a more stable backstory, explaining how setting up haunted houses is a practice for the crew and that they need to go through with it for financial reasons.

If you want a found footage horror film and don't want cheesy jump scares then this movie is great for you.

So I was looking for something to watch and came across Hell House LLC and decided to watch it after checking it's ratings online. I am well aware of the 'found footage' genre that has become a normal horror movie cliché and while I have enjoyed some in the past, a majority of them, I do not like.

Hell House LLC is one of the ones I liked.

The film is part found footage and part documentary mixed into a sort of surreal horror film. The fact that the film takes place in and around a pop-up Halloween haunted house only allows them to use weird and creepy effects without expecting people to suspend belief.

The movie has a decent pace, the actors are your average run of the mill B-Horror cast.

The writing is fine, but it's another one of those films that explain nothing and I really hate that.