Hell House LLC

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.

Found Footage movies are a hit and miss, more often the shakiness of the camera tends to be a distraction, but there are those instances when the cameras flawed views work for the subject. Hell House LLC has been compared to The Houses October Built as both focus on Commercial Haunted Houses, but Hell House is more similar to Lake Mungo in that multiple video sources are used to create a documentary feel. The setting of Hell House is important as it is an actual commercial Haunted House, so the creepiness of the setting adds to the genuine feel of the events. What makes Hell House stand out is the seemingly mysterious way the horrible events of its fatal opening are presented, making efficient use of Youtube and Cell Phone videos we view the panic of the situation along with the mystery of what exactly is going on. The movie does slowly reveal what did happen but also leaves some mystery for the viewer to ponder. Most reviews of the film agree that Hell House is unique and does not seem too derivative among the dozens of recent found footage films. The only area of the debate centers on the ending; you will either love it or hate depending on how much closure you seek. Overall Hell House LLC is a terrific film, and for its small budget, it compares well with bigger budget films that focus more on FX and less on the plot.

Found footage horror movie set in an abandoned hotel that some enterprising young people hope to turn into an elaborate Halloween haunted house. But on opening night, things go horribly wrong and 15 people end up dead. An investigative journalist sets out to uncover the truth of Hell House.

When Hell House LLC works, it's incredibly effective. There are parts of the film that really creeped me out. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's clowns. So, when dead-looking clown mannequins start moving mysteriously in the night, it's uber-creepy to me.. Throw in a basement with Satanic drawings on the wall and old bibles scattered on the floor and I'm ready to hide until it's all over. The backstory of the hotel and the hotel itself are also pluses for the film. You get a weird, spooky vibe from the building even before anyone sets foot inside it. Finally, I like the fact that Hell House LLC is really two found footage movies in one. I won't spoil anything, but the twist at the end worked on me.

But as my rating would indicate, all is not perfect with Hell House LLC. I have two chief complaints. First, almost every character involved in the haunted house preparation is as annoying as sin. The entire time I was watching, I just hoped Paul and Danny would be among the dead. Second, and more importantly, not a single character in the movie displayed an ounce of common sense. You hear strange things in the night - what do you do? Walk around with a camera and a weak flashlight? Well that's what these people do. Turn on the damn lights! The lights work - use them. And after you've seen strange things that shouldn't happen (like a dead-looking clown moving around), do you get out? Not if you're these lunkheads. The first time I saw some of the happenings they see, I'd be on the first bus out of town. But because the characters in this movie act without an iota of common sense, they're like lambs led to slaughter.

Overall, a real mixed bag. Hell House LLC is creepy enough, but the characters really hurt my enjoyment.

5/10

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.

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.