Hell House LLC

That was genuinely absolutely terrifying. I absolutely love horror films and this is one of the highest rated ones I've given. It's very hard to find good horror films but this is actually a really good one. Why is this film so under the radar it should definitely be a lot more popular then it is. It's so much scarier and better then all the big budget ones. Like the conjuring and insidious and all the doll films, I personally don't find any of them scary but I actually find this scary so what does that tell you.

Found footageflicks can go two ways, or it works or it fails completely, teher's no in between. Luckily this one works and even as it doesn't have any effects or let's even say blood (okay at the end a bit) it is sometimes creepy and towards the end you want to know what is going on.

Of course the flick has to start with a lot of 'real' news facts and interviews with cops who were at the crime scene but once that's over the movie picks up speed. Don't watch it to closely, the footag eis edited a thing that in real life can't happen naturally but if you don't mind that, then it gives you entertainment.

The use of manne quinq and clows and stuff happenng in a basement, well, face it, it delivers. What is going on with the hotel, I can't tell, ypu will have some background but no explaination at all.

So, it's okay even without effects, just look at Blair Witch, no effects there, It isn't a Blair Witch but it's surely worth picking up.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

I approach all modern found footage movies with a sense of cynicism nowadays - mainly because they're usually atrocious - and going by the trailer, cover and even title of this film, it was no exception. But what a pleasant surprise! Great twists, a real and genuine sense of dread in the hotel and intense up until the end.

Location was perfect, fairly rural and run down but without giving in to the cliché, 'cabin in the woods' scenario. Great use of Halloween props for creating some ultra-spooky scenes and a decent enough original storyline to keep the viewer interested throughout.

Not perfect by any stretch, I'm still a bit muddled as to what actually happened in the house but otherwise highly recommended.

Hell House LLC was probably the biggest surprise for me in the found footage genre. The movie flowed well throughout the whole duration, not becoming too boring like some horror movies often do. While there is a lack of character development at the start, they begin to flesh out later on in the film. The story seems believable as well, while some movies may explore a haunted area "because they want to see what is there", Hell House LLC sets up a more stable backstory, explaining how setting up haunted houses is a practice for the crew and that they need to go through with it for financial reasons.

If you want a found footage horror film and don't want cheesy jump scares then this movie is great for you.

Hell House LLC has a lot of pretty decent scares, but the actual story of the movie doesn't hold up.

This is a found footage movie that tells the story of some down-on-their-luck New Yorkers scouting out a new location for their Halloween haunt business in the made-up town of Abbadon. There, they buy an abandoned hotel with a dark history. Even though something is clearly wrong with the location, the crew pushes on towards opening night, where a terrible event claims many lives.

If that sounds like a spoiler, it's not, really. The movie opens laying all of this out, and it's more about the steps that happen along the way.

The movie excels at spooky atmosphere. Rather than get in your face with ghouls or excessive amounts of CGI, Hell House plays things subtle. It might be as simple as a shadow in the hallway, or things changing places when you look away for just a second, but it succeeds in being very unsettling without going overboard.

That being said, some of the production is a little sloppy, particularly in the sound design department. Being found footage, a lot of the sound in this movie has a very distinct style to it -- built-in microphones on handheld cameras. It's a little bit tinny, there's room echo, and so on. Which makes it SUPER OBVIOUS when they dub in new sounds during post production, because the dubbed sounds are ten times clearer than the microphone's source audio and definitely weren't present during filming. Not a deal breaker, but a minor annoyance.

The real problem is when Hell House tries to tell its story. The actors do okay, but this movie is jam packed full of horror movie logic where everybody involved spontaneously forgets about common sense. Being found footage, the camera is always rolling, but the condemning evidence is always either handwaved away for convenient reasons, or outright ignored entirely. These are ignorant characters doing dumb things, because if they were too smart and recognized the danger then we wouldn't have a movie to watch.

There's also not a lot in the way of character development. Real documentaries spend time helping us get to know the people involved, but that's glossed over here. We get little snippets of things early on, like how some people are known for arguing, or how the group had a bad time at their last haunt location in Queens. It largely does not matter, and there's zero sense of who these people were before they arrived at Abbadon. I never even knew most of their names.

Without getting in to spoiler territory, I also found the ending to be sort of a letdown. The movie is great with subtle scares, but the ending ends up being more confusing and underwhelming than scary. It's this weird half-step of showing you what happened, but only the least important parts.

I guess I did not hate my time with Hell House. It's fine, and mainly exists as a vehicle to deliver spooky moments. Just don't think about it too much harder than that.