We cannot decipher what goes wrong in the basement, but we hear a shriek that does not seem to be pre-recorded. The rest of the film tries to take the audience back to this moment of rupture from different perspectives and construct the timeline of doom from scratch.
We see photos of a blood-stained floor clicked by photographer Martin Cliver, who broke into the scene shortly after the tragedy. Then, we hear the first-hand account of the Hell House from Sara Havel, a member, as the documentary filmmakers interview her.
Sara provides more footage from which the filmmakers can reconstruct the timeline. The viewers get to know from the footage that Sara is the girlfriend of Alex, who is the main organizer and owner of the Hell House. They are on their way from NY to Abaddon, where they have bought an old hotel intending to renovate it as a scare house, which becomes the Hell House.
As they explore the property, they find a rope hanging from the attic and a pentagram drawn on a basement wall, which set the tone for all that would unfold in the following series of events. They set up a few grotesque plastic figures in place, and in good humor, test whether the heads of the mannequins move or not. And the next thing we know, the inanimate clowns start moving in and around the house. A series of well-executed jump scares and supernatural shenanigans follow as the trajectory of the film moves towards the predetermined fate of people involved in the nightmare.
This is the question that keeps us hooked to the storyline till the very end. In the YouTube footage, we see a hoard of frenzied tour-goers fleeing from the basement but are unable to make anything of it due to the ruckus and the jarring camera movements typical of a found footage narrative.
Later, from the clips provided by Sara, we see the pentagram and Bibles in the basement, which Sara rightly finds suspicious. As well, the encounters with the ghosts are rather enjoyable and creepy, managing to work in some great moments here. The hitchhikers encountering the one spirit on the highway and taking her to the hotel where they have a chilling encounter there is a fantastic start to this, while the mysterious figures in the photographs and video footage are incredibly creepy when they manage to just pop up unexpectedly to freak them out.
There's a rather enjoyable air of relentlessness at that point where it just sends ghouls and various figures they know shouldn't be there that adds a lot to the film as a whole. Most of the creepiness comes from the deranged look of the ghouls which are quite creepy, and overall these are more than enough to hold this up over it's few main flaws.
The film's biggest issue is the finale where it's a major letdown from the previous entry as the full revelation of what the entity's looking for and how they're there are just lame and not all that impressive. It's just underwhelming to know that's the full extent of their purpose for being invited and really just smacks of being an afterthought which isn't the case with the original which had a more pronounced and effective atmosphere.
It's also rather complicated in its set-up as to the cutting back-and-forth to the interview segments in the studio and back to their exploits in the hotel itself which is distracting with seeing them alive and then being tortured split seconds later, making the overall presentation if not the setup being quite disorienting. Otherwise, there's not much else to this one. He seems to really struggle with the beginnings of his films and then tends to find his way as it goes along. Also he writes some terrible dialogue, especially in the non-horror scenes.
But what saves all this and makes his films extremely watchable is that he seems to be a master at directing horror. Everything about it just works. The creatures moving about inside it, the maze-like feel it has and the feeling of overwhelming dread when a character is in there are just terrific. Not often do individual scare moments get me but this film has one that really caught me off-guard and had my heart leaping. I didn't see it coming and combine that with the imagery and I'm not afraid to say it got me.
If Cognetti can either fix his dialogue and the clunky non-horror scenes he writes, or get a script-doctor in to do it for him and just let him focus on the horror side of things, then he has a big future ahead of him.
He has created something special with The Abandon Hotel and I very much look forward to checking out the third installment now. Login Register. Loading, please wait. Quality: All p p p 3D. Year: All 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 Hell House , a documentary film crew visits the scene of the tragedy to investigate what really happened that night.
Not Rated. Did you know Edit. Trivia After one of the scares Paul runs out of the strobe light room and throws up. That was real and not scripted. The actor threw up for real on camera. Goofs Near the end of the movie when the reporter is arguing her case about going to check out the house, she says, "It's 5am, no one will be around".
When they exit the lobby, bright sunlight can be seen through the windows indicating midday. When they arrive at the house, the sky is just breaking light outside.
User reviews Review. Top review. Found Footage movies are a hit and miss, more often the shakiness of the camera tends to be a distraction, but there are those instances when the cameras flawed views work for the subject.
The setting of Hell House is important as it is an actual commercial Haunted House, so the creepiness of the setting adds to the genuine feel of the events. What makes Hell House stand out is the seemingly mysterious way the horrible events of its fatal opening are presented, making efficient use of Youtube and Cell Phone videos we view the panic of the situation along with the mystery of what exactly is going on.
The movie does slowly reveal what did happen but also leaves some mystery for the viewer to ponder. Most reviews of the film agree that Hell House is unique and does not seem too derivative among the dozens of recent found footage films.
The only area of the debate centers on the ending; you will either love it or hate depending on how much closure you seek. Overall Hell House LLC is a terrific film, and for its small budget, it compares well with bigger budget films that focus more on FX and less on the plot.
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