| Director(s) | Stephen Cognetti |
| Principal Cast | Ryan Jennifer as Sara Danny Bellini as Alex Gore Abrams as Paul Jared Hacker as Tony Adam Schneider as Andrew “Mac” McNamara Alice Bahlke as Diane |
| Release Date | 2015 |
| Language(s) | English |
| Running Time | 83 minutes |
When I decided I had to do a bonus movie to meet my 31 “horrors” in 31 days, I thought might as well kill two birds with one stone and review this. Stephen Cognetti’s found footage flick, Hell House LLC, is a well acted, tense, and genuinely eerie story that manages to provoke and scare in spite of its low budget. While it doesn’t change up the game, it’s more than competent in all the places that matter and should entertain any horror fan looking for a quick, easy, and effective scare.
The film , which is shot and edited like a documentary, chronicles the creation and subsequent tragedy of Hell House, a haunted house attraction. Clips are taken from found footage the staff that renovated the dilapidated hotel into Hell House took while they were working, faux YouTube videos about the subsequent tragedy at the location which ended up killing fifteen people, and interviews referencing the same. Earlier portions of the movie which contain news clips and YouTube videos of the tragedy grounds the mystery and makes it feel like something that might have actually happened. There’s a gravity to the carnage that elevates the movie about the standard camp you would expect. Cuts (especially from certain interviews) foreshadows events in a way that creates tension without explicitly telling the audience how things will play out. It’s a unique use of the documentary style to set up scares that gives the movie an elevated feeling compared to other found footage contemporaries.
Every member of the main cast feels real and well grounded. Their decisions make sense and their skepticism to the supernatural is justified given the way key events play out. You can feel the tension between the group members grow as things in the hotel get more intense. Schisms and party lines break naturally and feel like power dynamics many of us encounter in our own social groups. In particular Gore Abrams performance as Paul creates moments of levity which simultaneously makes the descent and fracturing of the group more pronounced.
I enjoyed that the film presents a lot of subtle clues about certain character motivations and the nature of the supernatural elements of the movie. These looser “rules” and general associations with satanism are more than enough to engender a creepy aesthetic I loved that there were not many , if at all, stupid jump scares. We see scary things from the corner of our eyes and that in end of itself is the scare. Character reactions to the unseen spooks do more than enough at provoking audience imagination to think about the severity of the events that are transpiring.
Unfortunately, the end of the movie leaves some critical questions unanswered which stands out more than normal because of the sense of realism in editing and decision making had made a lot of sense before. Some of these decisions create cool scares, but I think they ruin some narrative integrity and make the movie feel less intelligent than it had been up till that point. The movie also makes constant usage of a “glitch” (random glitchy bars show up in random places on the screen to indicate that something is messing with the cameras waves) effect which felt like unnecessary visual flair that distracted from what was actually going on.
REPORT CARD
| TLDR | Hell House LLC is a deceptively fun found footage horror film, that stays believable and creepy for the majority of it’s run time. The characters are relatable and the scares feel natural and well-earned. Despite the bumpy ending, I was left satisfied at the end of the movie. |
| Rating | 8.2/10 |
| Grade | B |
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