Summary:
Eight years after the tragedy at Hell House LLC, an investigative journalist decides she will try to uncover the mystery of what happened that night.
My Thoughts:
“Hell House LLC” might not have been a horror classic on par with modern greats like “Hereditary” or “The Witch”, but it was a very solid found footage film that had plenty of inventive scares and boasted a creepy atmosphere that permeated throughout. I genuinely enjoy the first film, and though it does have its problems, I still would recommend watching it if you can find it. This movie is more or less the same thing as what we saw in the first film, only a little less inventive and a little less intelligent. That being said, I don’t think that this is a bad movie, but it’s not all that great either.
One of the biggests problem this film has is that there isn’t really a reason to go back to the Abaddon Hotel anymore after the first film ended (in fact, I sort of wonder why the Hotel wasn’t razed to the ground after events that transpired there). The first film had multiple timelines, so we simultaneously saw the creation of the Hell House LLC haunted attraction and what happened after the accident that killed fifteen people. This film takes place after the investigation into what happened to the investigative reporter… so it’s essentially just the same exact story. The only real thing this movie does to keep the story feeling fresh is add in a few vignettes/side stories from other visitors that have gone missing; there’s one story we see from someone who apparently live streamed his whole tour on Facebook, and then there are a couple other videos of kids breaking in and sneaking about before they stumble over some spooky stuff.
But besides the few vignettes, the bulk of the story revolves around investigative journalist Jessica Fox (Jillian Geurts, “Oceans 8”) and her crew going in to investigate the house. Once they break in, the crew becomes trapped in the house and are beset by all sorts of creepy things; most of the film actually takes place on that one night where the crew enters. It sort of just seems like any other found footage/ haunted house movie after that.
I think the biggest problem that this film has is that it doesn’t really do much to even try to be inventive with its scares or premise- the original one set up the concept, and this one just sort of piggybacked off that films ideas. The first film was able to rely on a sort of mystery element, flipping back and forth between the timelines to reveal more information, while still teasing the viewers with a sense of dread. The first film also uses a lot of hidden scares, where cult members or clowns or what-have-you will lurk in the background, often not really doing anything creepy other than standing there; while the stationary people might not in earnest be doing anything wholly terrifying, it certainly adds a bit of atmosphere. While this film does have quite a few hidden scares (ie. people hiding in the background), it also does a lot more to make those scares a little less hidden (ie. freezing the frame and zooming in on hiding people), which sort of defeats the point. The creepy atmosphere in the first film was crafted by allowing things that went unnoticed to still subliminally influence us; while I was watching that first film, there were a few scenes where I couldn’t quite tell what was wrong, but I could tell something was ever so slightly off, and that unidentifiable off-ness, in turn, made me uncomfortable throughout the film. When you put a spotlight on what’s scary, you banish all the shadows, and instead lay bear what schmaltzy elements might’ve accompanied it in the first place. A scary moment isn’t scary if you have to show us twice and use a swell of music to get us to jump.
Verdict:
There were a couple cool moments in this film, but most of them were in the vignettes or confined to the last fifteen minutes of the movie. Most of this film feels incredibly similar to the original “Hell House LLC”, only this one isn’t as scary or creative. This is far from the worst found footage film I’ve seen, but it doesn’t do anything to make me want to label it as good either.
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