Hell House LLC
(2019)

Dir: Stephen Cognetti
93 min.

Reviewed Oct 24, 2019

NO SPOILERS AHEAD

Currently available through streaming services Amazon Prime, YouTube, Vudu and iTunes[1], Hell House LLC[sic] is a unique take on the overwrought subgenre of ‘found footage’ movies which have proliferated like teenage rabbits since The Blair Witch Project[2]. Here you will find a believable backstory and a decent reason and explanation why someone is taping the organizational lowlights during the transformation of an abandoned hotel into a Halloween attraction.

Yet several flaws persist, despite what was obviously a tremendous amount of detailed planning and well-wrought enactments. Footage is played more than once of a member of the staff running past people on the tour; she runs through a double door leading to a staircase, and the double doors simply push open at the corner of a hallway in a haunted house. Anyone who has been to haunted houses know one of the attractions is testing and trying where you can and cannot go. These doors would have been an easy diversion for attendees to find and open with no locks, signs or otherwise, despite the thin colored tape on the floor to guide the tour.

The group of entrepreneurs who go from place to place setting up haunted houses have found this haunted ex-hotel, and after several days, get the lights on. Yet during the day when the group is inside setting up props, preparing festivities and simply moving through the rooms of the main level, lighting is not a problem. Yet at night, when strange noises or other frights make our cautious group survey these surroundings, they somehow forget that the light switches work. Obviously, that’s to up the creep factor, but I’m simply not buying it.

Yet I recommend this one, especially for low-gore fans, and those sick of the genre wanting a different twist.