Review: Hell House LLC

Having lived through The Blair Witch, I am not one for found-footage movies. (Let’s be clear, I hated it as much then as I do now.)

I’ve seen this one floating around and may have even started it at some point. My issue with this movie, like so many others, is that the first 45 minutes of the movie is just fucking nonsense. I was bored and therefore tuned out so by the time they got to all the creepy clown dolls moving everywhere, I really gave no shits.

For me, I don’t watch horror movies for the scares. There’s a satire I like to it – in the good ones, at least. So there are movies that scare me that I still hate (and not for scaring me). Though what a great topic to write about at some point: why do we watch horror?

Anyway. Hell House misses a heck of an opportunity to expand upon how well they use the found-footage to show things moving in-between frames (it really is fucking creepy). But they spend the first 10 minutes going over news reels. Then the next is talking to documentary experts who are teasing the house. But by incorporating found-footage into a documentary you spend more time setting up the format than you do on the story.

And there really is NO story. The story is these kids (young adults?) turn a house into a haunted house but little context outside of that. By the name of the hotel (the nickname Hell House as well as the actual name, Abaddon Hotel), you can guess it’s got something to do with the devil but still.

While I liked a few of the camera tricks, it wasn’t enough to sell me.

Recommend for…

Found-footage junkies.