“This place is about as haunted as a sock drawer.”
Lance Preston-Grave Encounters
The found footage genre isn’t my favorite. It’s hard to make a found footage film make sense for the entirety of the run time. The Blair Witch Project is a rare exception. Most fall more in line with Paranormal Activity 4. The Blair Witch Project was a massive box office success, but the found footage craze didn’t take off until the end of the decade. There are a ton of failures in the genre, but Hell House LLC falls somewhere in the middle.
The movie does something very strange. It begins as a mockumentary but slowly turns into a true-to-form found footage film. The story centers around five friends who run a traveling haunted house attraction. They choose an abandoned hotel in a small town outside of New York City. The hotel is left in ruins, and we spend much of the movie following the team around fixing it up. Along the way, creepy things start to happen as we build to opening night.
The cast isn’t particularly bad, but this isn’t the most talented cast. Found footage is a hard thing for an actor to pull off. Most of the lines tend to be adlibbed, and chemistry is super important. The cast’s chemistry is almost nonexistent. Gore Abrams plays Paul, the main cameraman. We don’t see his face often, but his voice is present almost the entire film. As an audience surrogate, he’s fine, but his personality begins to wear a bit as the movie progresses.
As a horror film, Hell House LLC doesn’t do anything new with the genre. Most of the scares are jump scares we’ve seen a million times. The twists and turns play out like they were spit out by ChatGPT. The only problem is it wasn’t around when this was made. There’s virtually zero originality in the film.
I know I’ve hammered this film, but truthfully, I was entertained. There’s a ten-minute period just before the third act starts that is genuinely creepy. The problem is most of the film is tedious, and the ending is eye-rollingly cliche. I wish the movie would have followed the mockumentary path. If you want a haunted, fun house film, check out Haunt. It’s much more interesting, and the lead is fantastic. Hell House LLC isn’t bad; it’s mostly just bland.
Rating: 5/10
