Most well-regarded “found footage” horror movies burst into the mainstream with rumors of it being a true story (“The Blair Witch Project,” 1999), or night-vision packed-theater clips of people going nuts over a jump scare (“Paranormal Activity,” 2009). “Hell House LLC” (2015) has taken the opposite route, never getting a wide theatrical release and instead steadily finding fans over the years.
The saga now spans four films, plus a director’s cut of the original, which holds up enough even in its original form to be worthy of annual fall viewing. Writer-director Stephen Cognetti’s faux-documentary does a lot of things better than most movies in this style, and it also has some of the usual flaws. But the scariness is enough to overcome those flaws.
Haunted hotel entrepreneurs
The “talking heads” – a journalist, a photographer, a documentarian, and people who were on the scene on the pivotal tragic night in October 2009 – tend to be pretty bad actors. But the core group of entrepreneurs who craft a haunted-house tour at an abandoned Abaddon, N.Y., hotel – whose exploits we see in this footage – are all good actors.
“Hell House LLC” (2015)
Director: Stephen Cognetti
Writer: Stephen Cognetti
Stars: Gore Abrams, Alice Bahlke, Danny Bellini
They do drift into annoying at times – Paul (Gore Abrams), for instance, is an inveterate womanizer – and there’s a fair amount of bickering within the staff. But we get a sense of entrepreneurs, led by Danny Bellini’s Alex and girlfriend Sara (Ryan Jennifer Jones) – the lone survivor of the tragedy — crafting a scare-ride in the spirit of both fun and money-making.
Cognetti doesn’t thoroughly explain the curse of this hotel as he riffs on a plot structure done less well in “The Amityville Curse” (1990), where house-flippers accidentally select a haunted abode to fix up. He gives us just enough “official” information – the Abaddon Hotel was officially closed down 30 years ago because of broken pipes.
But we see piles of Bibles in the basement, and Satanic markings on the walls. The townspeople –including Melissa (Lauren A. Kennedy), who signs on to play the chained-up damsel in the basement –know the hotel owner hanged himself back in the day. But they don’t give it much thought.
I would’ve liked a little more clarity about the fates of everyone on the tour’s fateful opening night, in terms of who is dead and who is missing. The ending is better than most “found footage” horror – including a creepy twist — but it leans a tad too much into shaky, on-the-fritz footage for my taste. (I’ve heard the director’s cut adds clarity to the climactic basement scene.)
The scare-mongers get scared
“Hell House” doesn’t use jump scares, but it makes nice use of unsettling moments, including a creepy-as-hell clown manikin suddenly standing at the head of the basement stairs, looking down. Then it has turned its head the next time the cameraman pans over to it. It’s a dead-simple scare – and rather amusing when described – but totally effective.
Cognetti borrows a ton from “The Blair Witch Project” – including a creepy basement, a zoned-out person facing a wall, the incursion of the supernatural into the natural world, and a person recording a video journal while closely cropped on their face. In this case, we can see a little to Paul’s side, and what we see there leads to the second-best creep-out moment.
There’s a fine line between “found footage” that’s a transparent fake-out and the type that draws you in so much that you stop thinking about the gimmick. I find “The Blair Witch Project” is too transparent. The original “Paranormal Activity” is a master class in surveillance-camera tension, but it’s not consistently compelling. The “V/H/S” films have good segments, but never do we overlook the gimmick.
“Hell House LLC” is the 21st century “found footage” film that comes closest to putting it all together with quality acting, a chilling premise wherein the presentation style makes sense, and a creepy mythology that makes me want to learn more.