Hell House LLC is written and directed by Stephen Cognetti, and it has just about everything you would expect from a found footage horror movie. It takes far too long to get to the horror. There are long, drawn out scenes dedicated to character building, but the cast is so large that it becomes difficult to tell most of the characters apart. It also feels strange that nearly thirty minutes pass before another female character gets much attention, leaving the cast feeling unbalanced. The dialogue often comes across as improvised, as if Cognetti simply told the actors to hang out and banter until something scary happened.
The biggest problem with the first half is how little actually happens. The characters spend so much time talking that the movie starts to feel like a home video of friends preparing for a haunted house attraction rather than a horror film. Some of the dialogue is downright cringe worthy, especially when one of the guys repeatedly asks a female character to go topless. It is the kind of interaction that makes you question whether the scene was supposed to be funny, realistic, or just uncomfortable. Whatever the intention, it does not make these characters any more interesting to watch.
There is a reason Paranormal Activity became such a successful found footage film. It understood how to do a lot with very little, building tension through atmosphere and the anticipation of something going wrong. Hell House LLC has the low budget charm and basic ingredients of that style of horror, but it spends so much time doing nothing that the tension struggles to build. Found footage can get away with a lot when it makes the audience feel like something terrible could happen at any moment. Here, I was mostly waiting for the movie to remember that it was supposed to be scary.
Thankfully, things improve considerably around the forty minute mark. The movie finally starts delivering some genuinely creepy moments and effective scares, giving the second half the energy that was missing from the beginning. The haunted house setting has potential, and once Cognetti starts taking advantage of it, the film becomes much more entertaining. The scares do not erase the problems with the dialogue or pacing, but they at least give the movie a reason to exist beyond watching a group of people talk to one another.
It is also easy to understand how Stephen Cognetti helped inspire the wave of cheap, easily produced horror movies that can attract an audience simply by promising a few scares. Fans of the genre, myself included, will often give a movie like this a chance just because it is supposed to be horror. I came back to Hell House LLC for exactly that reason. The found footage format allows filmmakers to work with limited resources, but a small budget is no excuse for letting the story drag or expecting endless banter to substitute for suspense.
Hell House LLC is a frustrating found footage movie that takes far too long to get going, with an oversized cast, awkward dialogue, and an opening stretch that feels like a whole lot of nothing. The second half is considerably better, delivering the creepy moments and scares that the first half desperately needed. It is easy to see why this kind of low budget horror has an audience, even if the execution here is uneven. I spent too much time waiting for the movie to get interesting, but once it finally did, there was enough horror to make the experience worthwhile. Result: B
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