Alright, so let me preface this with the fact that I love, love, love found footage movies. I think I was about 8 or 9 when I first wanted to see the Blair Witch Project, which obviously became one of my favorite movies ever (and still to this day).
It was somewhat of a pioneer of it's genre and reviews are actually quite divided. On one side, people understand that the footage is make believe, these people were actors, nothing that happens isn't scripted. I mean Burkittsville, Maryland is a real place in America. The legend is a real story (maybe real or make believe??? who knows) among the people who live in the village. What I particularly enjoy about Blair Witch is that the acting isn't THAT atrocious. Even the interviews with the older people who have lived in the town are well-acted almost as if they are a real indie documentary crew.
Anyways, enough about Blair Witch. The only relevance is that I am a true fan of the genre because it is unlike other horror movies. Rarely do you have loud noises for intention jump scares. You rarely see ghosts or demons or whatever is following the theme. The fear is based on things you cannot see. It's based on the unknown. It's scary because you are seeing from someone's first person perspective that they are terrified, and the reason why is not necessarily revealed. There's no room for cheesy costumes or bad scares. It's all psychological and that's why I love it.
So, I just download Shudder - and saw Hell House on here and thought I'd give it a try. Most reviewers were giving it about 4/5 skulls - so it can't be that bad. I've watched my share of reaaaaaally bad found footage movies.
SPOILER ALERT BEGINNING. Here we start in Abaddon, New York. Which is a completely fictional town - so we can get rid of any suspicion of this being a true story. The story starts with tonnes of news footage with ambulances and firetrucks and police and journalists all standing outside of the Abaddon Hotel. A group of young people probably in their 30s put together Haunted Houses each year for Halloween across New York. This was their opening night for their house they had been working on for weeks. And on this night, there has obviously been some kind of terrible tragedy as stretchers are being rolled outside the building. The beginning of the movie is the most irritating to me because they spend a lot of time explaining/using the following excuses: "People are given gag order who were nearby" "The police are refusing to reveal any information" "Everyone is too traumatized to talk about it" "The truth would scare the people in the town too much" Which, to me, each of these independently could have been built up to better excuses. Like the first 15 minutes are very poorly explained because none of these excuses could seem legitimate or be passable in any realistic situation. There are some found footage, which they explain was uploaded to Youtube and has been available for viewing by tonnes of people. I mean, I'm not an expert on Youtube but I am pretty sure that footage would have been deleted as soon as anyone reported it to Youtube/The Police. But I guess for the case of this strange introduction, the footage is available on Youtube. The footage is filmed by a guest who was waiting in line to visit the haunted house but doesn't actually spend more than about 3 minutes inside. Her and her friend/boyfriend/friends wait in line, make fake scares at each other. When they finally get inside, they walk by some dummies and strobe lights, a couple actors that jump out and spider webs and such. It's only until they walk through most of the house and one of the actors RUNS by them before they get to the "basement". Once they get to the basement there is about 30 people trying to bust up the doors screaming to get out. I mean firstly where this scenario fails, is that the basement itself is pretty small. They were supposed to be having people regulating the entrance and there is probably a capacity so I don't know how they were letting so many people in to jam pack the basement. I mean, I am not actually sure if this group of people had a permit, paid rent, followed any laws or regulations for the type of business. Who knows. They left that out. But for the sake of not completely writing off the movie we continue. Before I turn this into a whole novel, which I could, I will cut it shorter. 5 Members of the Hell House crew: (it was hard for me to catch names just by the movie) Sara (the only woman) and Alex (basically the manager/boss of the crew) Paul (curly hair, films most found footage) Tony and Max (set up cameras and basically argue the whole time about whether ghosts are real or not) So basically, the movie begins when Sara, who was part of the crew, supposedly last remaining living as far as we know, being interviewed by press in the future - unloads a bag of VHS tapes on a table in front of a journalist (Diane). A man named Mitchell is set to review the footage while Sara tries to explain the story to her ability to Diane. Obviously traumatized, the only information we know is that one of the crew members was found dead in the house and had slit his own throat. They do not reveal who it is. First concern is, okay, Sara has these tapes. And no one seems to question why she has hid them from press and police. I mean, I'm no crime expert but I feel as though Sara would be in some sort of trouble for hiding evidence, especially what seemed like 9-10 video tapes.
Anyway, story goes - crew sets up for weeks for this haunted house. Weird paranormal activity occurs throughout the weeks they are preparing. Everyone ignores it and blames each other. No one believes each other. At least 3 people are so scared they want to leave but for some reason they stay.
There are some really good spooks in my opinion in the movie. In the beginning they talk about one of the masks they had placed on one of the dummies and how it was "too good of a mask to just put on a dummy that wasn't going to move". Obviously that was a hint to the future of the dummy moving. The mask is good. It's very Nosferatu with a little blood around the mouth and eyes. Always gonna be spooky to me. There are at least 3 great scares with that "dummy". I guess I won't spoil them. WATCH THE MOVIE THEY SPOOKED ME. There is another dummy character I love that they call Hector. He is sitting at the piano. Paul (who captures most of the video) sits beside Hector in one scene and plays a little riff on the old piano a couple times. And that riff comes out again multiple times in spookier situations. I love how they reused it.
There is one thing obviously left to nearly the end of the film that irritates me. Maybe on purpose. Alex, the leader of the pack, has left the rest of his crew in the dark about the history of this hotel. They all went into the idea of the haunted house with the understanding that the building was just condemned and shut down because of money or whatever other situation. One of the hired actresses reveals that she believes it's haunted.
Later in the movie, the snoopy photographer reveals that he knew the man who had originally purchased the hotel. His name was Andrew Tully. He was allegedly a head of some kind of cult. Which explains the pentagrams and upside down crosses painted in the basement with the array of upside down bibles on the ground that the whole crew seemed to laugh off. I suppose the story goes that Andrew Tully had ran the hotel for unknown reasons. And that he named it after Abaddon, which isn't actually the town. But Abaddon supposedly a name from the bible which signifies "The Angel of Death" (cool Slayer reference). He performed many rituals in the building which obviously hindered with the business once he finally opened. One of the most notable cases was when an 11 year old girl and her mother went missing after checking into the hotel. It scared the town so much that no one would stay at the hotel anymore. Andrew ended up hanging himself in the dining room in 1989. So after many jump scares, confusing stories, weird ties, and unexplainable events. They go through with opening day anyway. People on the Youtube video are shown trapped, trying to escape, unable to, or screaming and stuck with demons in the basement as there are only two ways out of the house. In the future as Sara is being interviewed, she expresses feelings of overwhelming stress and anxiety. So Diane pauses the interview and lets Sara rest. But before she leaves the room she recommends that Diane and her crew visit the house whether they have permission or not. So what do they do? Of course for the sake of the movie they have to go to the house. There are some small smart details they included in the script that I actually thought were quite clever. We find out how lived. We found out who died. And we find out what state the hotel is in to this day. A little cheesy, a little unrealistic. Some great jump scares. Some stupid writing but also some clever writing. This movie had great potential and it is actually interesting the entire way through. I think it's smart. I want more found footage stories. Times have definitely changed since the Blair Witch and even maybe since this movie so more found footage applying to technology and situations we have these days have great potential in my opinion.
DO WATCH. Quite decent. Acting not terrible. Good scares. Give er' a watch it's only an hour and a half .
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