Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire

The first movie had so much dread and genuine creepiness to it. It's a shame that couldn't be carried throughout the series. Even the second one, the story was somewhat lacking but still there were moments of dread in it. This third installment just doesn't have that. I give it 6 stars because it kept me interested enough to watch to the end and it was by no means a boring movie. It simply had a lot to live up to...and the first movie in this series will always outshine the two that followed.

Bad writing and the story loses focus very quickly. If that was not bad enough, it's also very boring.

The first Hell House LLC was so good, an excellent found footage which used limited perspective to its advantage. Part three, like the second, has a handful of good moments and is watchable enough, but falls apart in the last third when it really should be getting going.

I don't mind finding ways to incorporate the actors of the previous films but the film relies far too much on re-using footage from the previous movies as a way to establish this. It totally shoe horned in and the audience doesn't really care, it's just there to make sure the actors all have role in the third (and likely final) installment. I mean, it's nice everybody gets to come back for a cameo or whatever but the whole "now they're ghosts who are trapped in the building" thing kind of feels pointless and by the fifth or sixth time it just seems gratuitous. Wouldn't it have been better to use "unreleased" footage from the previous movies instead of badly incorporating them into the current timeline?

Also, the play or whatever they're showing in the house is terrible. There's barely any set, the "acting" is awful and the story is moronic. Who the hell would be impressed by "Insomnia"? As theater, it's worse than a haunted house and that's saying something. I've seen a play where the audience went from room to room and it was pretty cool. I would be mad, as an audience member if I showed up and it was like the worst version of Faust ever.

The movie has some moments. But they just overuse things from the previous movies too much. Like, why are those clowns still there? I mean the blonde girl going into the basement is pretty much the highlight of the movie, but it just doesn't make sense. And I could not stop thinking about how that guy's scar seemed so fake and not like something someone would get in a car crash. For me, the whole ending just kind of did what the first movie did but worse.

There's a twist, which is ridiculous and... surprisingly Christian? It's sad because I honestly enjoyed a lot of the movie, thinking it better than the second, until it began its downward spiral in the second half.

A good found footage movie is always welcome, and clearly they're harder to get right than you might think. But please, lets let go of all this angels and devils nonsense. And stop re-using footage in your sequels, it wasn't cool in Silent night Deadly Night 2 and its not cool now.

I liked the first (7/10), made peace with the second (5/10) and was frustrated by the third (4/10). I think it's awesome that there is such a trilogy, but it only got exponentially worse. I really wanted for that not to be the case.

The third part of "Hell House LLC" feels like more of the same with the same being much more amateur hour. Cheap is a fitting word here. It's hard to separate the positive things for there are so few of them, but in the bits and pieces was a good, short scare sequence, some ambitious concepts (with poor execution) and maybe something else. Shamefully, it's easy to point out the acute flaws, like the one that disappointed me the most, which was acting. At times there was on-the-nose, cringe-inducing performance materials, obvious and whacky (weakly) scripted dialogue citations & characters sometimes didn't make a lot of sense. At the start I was trying to be intrigued by the story, but the plot, with all its twists and turns, seems like a far fetch, a rushed script awkwardly executed. The amount of scares is smaller, somehow even the visual & technical aspects of the movie feel cheaper, showing off boring cinematography, very little new props/locations etc. in the game & an choppy, unintentionally funny climax with a shot that's seasoned with grade c cgi. Both video and audio editing doesn't excel with anything as well. One little thing I hated was the constant, repatitive flashbacks with the footage from the first two parts, it felt like anything but necessary.

Comparing it to its two predecessors, the third part feels undeservedly underdone and uninspiring. I don't know what happened, maybe it was financial issues or time issues, we-don't-have-any-good-ideas issues, but something went wrong, leaving us with a found-footage / mockumentary horror flick that rests below average and comes with a bonus disappointment, being the 3rd part of a franchise and all. I really wanted to like it more, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it. Wishing the filmmakers of "Hell House LLC" trilogy great future success, I give this one a 4/10.

A summation of my reviews for the first two entries in the 'Hell House LLC' trilogy would be that writer/director Stephen Cognetti wasn't getting the regular scenes in his movie right, but that his horror scenes were world class. Interestingly 'Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire' serves to prove that the opposite of that is a much worse thing. This film has far better acting than the first two and also the dialogue is much better written, and yet it is the weakest of all three by a significant margin. Why? Because he forgot about the horror this time around.

The film has a tremendous amount of over-lapping shots from the first two films, mostly to show what happened in a certain part of the hotel/house or who a certain character was. At first this is helpful, but then it happens far too often from there on out and becomes very annoying and distracting. I think you just have to have faith that the audience has seen the first two films, and if they haven't then the information they are missing out on isn't hugely critical to the enjoyment of this one.

I think Cognetti was so intent on wrapping everything up into a nice little bundle storywise that he forgot what made the first two films so good, which was the epic horror sequences they featured. This one has little moments here and there, but there is never that big payoff that the first two films achieved. 'Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire' was a little bit of a disappointing way to end an otherwise very good horror trilogy. It's not unwatchable, but it is a big step in the wrong direction.