Movie Review: Hell House LLC

Five years after an unexplained malfunction causes the death of 15 tour-goers and staff on the opening night of a Halloween haunted house tour, a documentary crew travels back to the scene of the tragedy to find out what really happened.

I finally got to stream Hell House LLC on Amazon. It’s been in my list a little while now, so it seemed about time to finally watch it.

How was it? (In case you haven’t seen it and are wondering. Or, maybe you have already seen it, and are curious what I thought about it.)

Glad you asked, because I’m going to tell you.

What It Got Right

Here’s a list of what it got right in the order that it got them right:

1. Scares
2. Character development
3. Pacing
4. Atmosphere

Kudos on the scare factor for this movie. There were definitely some uncomfortable WTF moments.

In particular, without spoiling anything, two bedroom scenes (they were shot in a bedroom; there was no hanky panky happening) that sprouted major goosebumps on my arms when something entered the room. First time just to stand there and watch a bit before leaving, but the next time…

Well, I won’t say. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s potential pants-wetting moment.

It was also well-paced as far as not dragging and keeping the story moving. The characters were believable and well-played.

Because I love Halloween, it was fun to see a story about a group of people setting up a Halloween haunted house. But something else I love are Halloween haunts in real haunted places.  Hell House LLC set up shop in an old haunted hotel.

Which is where the paranormal lover in me was thrilled. I couldn’t help but notice a similarity between the movie’s Abaddon Hotel and the real-life spooky Shanley Hotel in Napanoch, NY. (Possibly one of the most terrifying haunted hotels ever.)

This also set up some good conflict between the characters, because the haunted house owner didn’t really tell all the crew about the rumors of murder and ghosts at the Abaddon. Because it’s just a rumor, right? No cause for alarm. ghosts can’t hurt you.

Or can they?

Tensions rise when spooky stuff starts happening. Such as, a piano plays by itself in the middle of the night, waking everyone up. Pretty harmless. Then it escalates.

Props move by themselves. In particular a very creepy life-sized clown comes to life. That scary clown is part of a couple of the movie’s more chilling scenes.

What It Got Wrong

Overall this was a pretty solid horror movie…until the end. That’s the major thing it got wrong.

But isn’t that where a lot of horror movies go wrong? The ending?

Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, but if they wanted to end it the way they did (which clearly they did and that’s why it ended that way), maybe they should’ve told it from a different perspective. The one they went with was incongruous with the rest of the movie, leaving me feeling cheated.

Rating

Because I enjoyed pretty much everything up to the ending, I give Hell House LLC 3 1/2 skulls out of 5.

Have you seen it? What did you think? How do you feel about found footage movies? Fan or not?