Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor

Let me start off by saying this was a very scary movie. I've been a big fan of the Hell House franchise for a while especially the first movie, so I had to watch this. This movie does the Hell House LLC IP justice in terms of scares, but unfortunately falls flat in almost all other regards of an interesting and well rounded film.

The acting is bad. It is very very bad. At no point does it seem like the characters believe or feel what they are saying. Their facial expressions are exaggerated and their mannerisms/speech are simply not convincing. It feels less like the actors are trapped inside an evil, haunted mansion, and more like they are reading lines off a teleprompter. It Is so so so bad. The choices they make are also ridiculous, to the point where it completely detracts from the realism.

Now that that is out of the way... this is in fact a very scary movie. It does rely heavily on jump scares which is slightly disappointing, but they are done very well and the tension building is top notch. The atmosphere is super creepy and the camera work, lighting, music/sound, all contributes to the super eerie vibe of the film.

This easily could have been an 8/10 if the acting and writing had been on par with the first Hell House. Overall I would still suggest giving it a watch just because how creepy it is.

The first hell house is enjoyable because it's kind of a hidden gem that's just recently gained more popularity. It had a lot of ambiguity in the story and left a pretty open ended story. The acting in part one is pretty good as well. Then we get to parts 2 and 3...

Those movies feel cheap. Much cheaper and just seemed to be feeding off the success of the first one. The acting is horrible in both, the news anchor is part 2 is laughably bad. Part 3 is more of the same. Neither one adds much to the story either.

This movie has much better acting and cinematography than the previous two. It feels like this one was made to actually further the story, not just as a cash grab. This movie does a much better going into the backstory than previous attempts. It's not perfect, but it does have some good scares and does a great job building tension. There are two seperate stories in this one and the way they connect works quite well. I'd recommend this for sure.

When an internet sleuth drags her girlfriend along to investigate the scene of a grisly massacre at a deserted mansion in the woods, they get more than they bargained for.

Over-produced found-footage that still manages to be effective. The ideal for this genre is to wind up the story like clockwork in the first ten minutes, then let it unwind through intelligent editing of the footage, allowing the audience to fill in the gaps. Instead this production gives us masses of exposition through the framing device of a mockumentary, with explanatory flashbacks, and inserts foreboding music where appropriate.

So the story has trouble standing on its own feet, with ho-hum plotting and characterisation, and in the end has to fall back into classic Blair Witch mode to reach its climax.

And despite the fussy direction, the in-scene motivations are poorly handled. You know you can run away, right, instead of shuffling? So that the audience might satisfy itself that every means of escape was tried, before this unstoppable evil had its way? Perhaps bolting and chaining the bedroom door might be in order - especially since the chain is hanging limp, in plain sight, in scene after scene? It won't do any good, but y'know ... And if a character is in terror of her life, the best thing to do is put the camera down while still trained on the action, so the audience doesn't have to wonder why she's still filming. If she needs the camera light to flee through the darkness, then that's OK. And of course: don't split up, and don't go toward the threat that just scared the bejebus out of you, etc. And it's not necessary to give a final homily on the nature of evil: we know what we just saw.

As for the figures of evil, I know many are creeped out just by the sight of clowns, but my first thought was, 'Oh, they hired some specialist mime artists for this bit - that's why they're so still. Do their noses get itchy?'

Yet the atmosphere is genuinely creepy, and I was mostly engaged throughout. Plus there is an original and excellent video conference weird-out at 45 mins that got my adrenaline buzzing. For that, and the mounting hysteria (a la BW, including a distant cry for help that sounds like the first victim) I rate it above average.

I loved the original Hell House: great scares, reasonable characters, great premise. The other sequels lacked all of that.

This one delivers on the great scares. Great tension, effective use of jumpscares. The premise and characters are okay here. Not great but not egregious. There's a couple eye-roll moments where they try too hard to tie it into the original (the music now has lyrics? What?).

It sounds like I'm really down on it when all I have good to say about it is the scares, but really, the directing is great at ratcheting up the tension and then hitting you with a solid moment of horror.

I'm knocking a half point off though for the very last scene before the credits, which felt like a weird retcon that didn't need to be in the movie at all.

I was looking forward to this installment of the series but my God I couldn't even finish it since the actress who plays Margot is just horrendous: she's constantly screaming her dialogue; she has no chemistry with her costars (the girlfriend and the brother), who, in comparison, are actually pretty decent; she's not at all convincing in any of her interactions or actions. It feels like she's in a different movie or production altogether, like a bad high school play. There have been some bad performances in these movies but she definitely takes the cake as the worst. Wish they chose a different lead.