Hell House

I thoroughly enjoyed this documentory. Although the principal characters had all the best intentions, they lacked any inteligence, thus, producing one of the funniest "fly on the wall" sagas I have seen. A teenage girl, programmed by her local church, sounds off about lesbians coming into the store, or diner where she works. The poor girl is reminiscent of a stepford daughter. How can she possibly make such an invalid, hateful remark when this child probably has never left her fold or been further than the church gates?. GROW UP!! Open your eyes. I chose to look upon the church folk with humour. Indeed, they strongly believe in their cause, but COME ON!!!! Youve got to be kidding. The zeal in which the kids, and the sweaty creepy father compete for places in the "horror" show, is in fact a Horror show in itself. I wonder if trying to conjure up so much hatred and fear is , or was Christs intention. I bet if he watched this movie He would indeed want to come and fetch his brides, (with a gun to His head perhaps). People prove to be scarey, and sweet ignorance takes hold of this grotesque flock. Laughable? yes, but then the reality that these people can manifest fear and loathing into a new batch of kids is HORRIFIC. Heavens forbid a gay child being raised in that community....... It may make you fat and sweaty, and wear skin hugging black lycra T shirts......YIKES!

The more I think about the way this movie was put together, the more interesting I find it to be. The pastor of a fairly large church allows a secular film crew to wander in and out of meetings, services and other events with a camera and apparently with no restrictions. The fact he allowed this is pretty amazing to begin with. Poor lighting, mediocre equipment and an editing process that is not under the control of the church could have easily resulted in a product could have been a disaster for the pastor and the church. The director sorts through what must have been hundreds of hours of filming to select what would be in the final movie and this documentary is the result. There is no opportunity for the church to go back and explain or clarify things that were said by any of the people that were filmed, including teenagers. You have to admire the pastor's courage. You also have to admire the fact that the director didn't use any apparent twists to push for a perspective, either for or against the church. This is not the norm in todays media.

The desired message of Hell House is pretty simple, yet easily distorted. "There are many traps to get us off the track for what God wants to do for us in our lives. It doesn't matter what we have done - drugs, violence, sexual sin, abortion, or even occult worship and the consequences from those things. He still loves us and is ready to forgive us. Eternity is beyond our comprehension, but we need to consider all of the information and make a decision on where we want to spend eternity. It's up to us. This church is just trying to use an unusual, yet contemporary method of communicating some of that information that we need to consider, so we can make an informed decision."

I'm sure Hell House was intended by the deeply religious people who appear in it as a means of saving "the lost". Instead, what it becomes is a shocking and horrifying look at religious extremism (yes, Islam is not the only religion burdened by extremists).

The one image that kept flashing through my head was of the low-budget cult classic "Faces of Death", in which a phony "Doctor of Death" presents a series of scenes (some authentic, some obviously fake)depicting various ways living things can die, including animal attacks, footage of autopsies, etc. Hell House has the exact same low-budget, creepy feel that Faces of Death had for me.

The most frightening thing is that the participants in the actual Hell House are convinced that they are saving young people by showing them their own extreme Judeo-Christian version of reality: girls who undergo abortions will go to hell, etc. What they are really doing is unnecessarily exposing young people to horrible graphic violence.

The way the people speak to each other is disturbing as well: everything is about "The Church"... the whole thing reeks of brainwashing. The discussions going on during the brainstorming session about what to do in the Hell House this year, as well as those going on during the casting reminded me of the films Bin Laden and his toadies send in to Al Jazeera TV talking about killing the infidels. The message is a little different, but the behavior and absolute mindless devotion to the "cause" is absolutely the same.

But the most horrifying and disgusting part for me was the footage from the "Christian school", where the teacher was talking about how they teach everything from the "Christian viewpoint", while the camera panned over a pile of textbooks with titles like "Spanish for Christian schools" and such. Reality and fact know no religion.

I see little difference between Muslim extremism and Christian extremism, with the exception that Muslim extremists engage in suicide missions. In both cases, the message is "Our way is the only way and if you don't follow it, you are doomed".

Jesus taught acceptance and love for fellow creatures. However, the people who participated in Hell House missed the point and are examples of the extreme right of Christianity, just as Bin Laden and the Taliban are representative of the extreme right of Islam. Unfortunately, too many people lacking direction in their life choose these paths that inevitably lead to their complete brainwashing and, effectively, losing sight of the real and usually very helpful teachings of their prophets and/or messiahs.

Hell House is an interesting documentary looking at a church's annual performance that demonstrates to people how easy it is to be flung into the screaming maw of Hell. The filmmakers are careful not to be too judgemental of this bizarre phenomena but in doing so miss the chance to look at the moral complexity that the story really offers.

The church's Hell House appears to condemn people who are victims of others - in one section a girl, who we discover was abused by her father, has drugs plied upon her, is raped and then in despair commits suicide - for which she is condemned to Hell. Another vignette features a young man, abused as a child by his uncle (is there a theme here?), dying from AIDS - naturally he gets dispatched to Hell too. The church don't actually bother condemning the abusers as much as they do their victims. Presumably the abusers repent and the pearly gates open wide for them whilst their victims languish in a hell of red lights, dry ice and perspex ceilings.

The film is fascinating and yet leaves the feeling that it could have been so much more. It also opens for debate the true morality and humanity of the people who organise this ghoulish performance.

I first came across "Hell House" about a year ago on Sundance Channel's "Doc Day," and having always been interested in films involving Christianity ("Saved!" and "Dogma" are my two favorites) I decided to sit down and maybe have a laugh or two at the down-south fundamentalism. What I saw wasn't much of a laugh: "Hell House" depicts young Christians in what has been called an "evangelical haunted house," in which they portray various scenes of people committing "sins," then being dragged off to hell by a demon in a cheap Halloween mask. In short, it's not a nice film for your Sunday afternoon.

Director George Ratliff first heard about this particular hell house when it attracted media attention for doing a school shooting scene just a few months after the Columbine shootings (though the house had been doing this particular scene for quite some time, it raised controversy in 1999 for being so soon after the Columbine massacre). He was allowed into the tight church community to make his 1999 documentary short "The Devil Made Me Do It," and went back a few years after to make this, the feature length-version, "Hell House." On the DVD features, Ratliff explains that the only way he would be allowed into the community to shoot the film was if he promised to portray things exactly how they are, and not put his own spin on them or try to counter the message of the church.

This is where the film sometimes gets criticism, as we are seeing some very offensive behavior from those putting on Hell House, and the only people there to dispute them are a bunch of drunken teenage Slipknot fans. To me, though, it shows how well the church has paralyzed the community with fear, as everyone goes along with this perverse project with smiles and clapping hands.

And yes, the Hell House itself is pretty disturbing- depicting scenes of botched abortions, a gay man dying of AIDS then renouncing God and being dragged off to hell, a girl killing herself after being raped at a club (then once again, being dragged off to hell), even a man burning for all of eternity because his uncle molested him as a child. To sum up, these people are "crazy" with three K's.

People seem to forget, however, that the film was not made by these religious fanatics themselves, but by an outsider. Most of the negative reviews for this are slamming the subject matter alone and the hideous people contained inside, which I think isn't fair. Yes, it's difficult to not be disturbed by "Hell House," (if I had seen this when I was younger, I would be convinced that I was going to hell) but you need to get past that and look at how Ratliff gets inside these people. I think I walked away from this movie feeling much more informed on the horrors of deep-south Christianity. Rather than having a vague idea from various stand-up comedians, this movie really gets to the nitty gritty of it all, which makes "Hell House" my all-time favorite documentary.

So if you want to be scared this Halloween, forget "Friday the 13th" or "The Exorcist" hunt down a copy of "Hell House" and prepare to be terrified.