When I said the Hell House franchise was my favorite found-footage film franchise so far, I wasn’t kidding. Hell House LLC, when I first watched it with my fiancé in the middle of the day one weekend, horrified me, and I couldn’t place why.
It wasn’t until he fell asleep and I was forced to finish the film myself
SPOILER and the demons left the portal and killed almost everyone in the hotel END SPOILER
that I cemented that I was truly scared and this film was something different. Something special.
Much like my much-loved, Monster Project (2017), the events on the screen gripped me and I couldn’t look away.
I think it’s why I love found-footage films so much. You want to see more, but you’re forced to see only what the actor is allowing you to. The gritty realism of some of the films feeds into the fear-factor, at least for me.
With Hell House LLC: Lake of Fire, I was glad to see the format went back to the first one and not the second, where it was more of a set-up to the punchline that was the third’s ending. I much prefer being with the people/crew as they’re getting haunted and not having the story told to me through third-person vignettes and camera jumps. It takes one out of the story. (I gave Hell House LLC: 2 a 7/10 overall rating on my Twitter because of this.)
The format for 3 as stated before was great, which, I thought, meant that the ending would be obvious. Boy, was I wrong. At the risk of spoiling anything else, I’ll say this: They got me with the seemingly obsessed owner of a new haunted house-type attraction not paying any mind to his actors/crew getting spooked/hurt. A definite call back to the first one, which I appreciated, but the ending of it all kind of soured it all for me.
Call me a Debbie Downer, but I was fully expecting this series to end on a much more dour note than it did. It was still depressing, in a sense, but definitely not in the way I wanted. For that, this review’s rating got bumped down from a 9/10 to an 8/10.
The Monster: The portal to hell in the basement of the Abaddon Hotel.
Monster Rating: 10/10
What did you think of Hell House LLC: Lake of Fire? Did you hate it? Love it? Thought it could’ve ended differently too? Let us know in the comments below!