We’ve been waiting for this for a while now. We may have been a bit hasty,but we’ve already been able to enjoy the second installment of Hell House LLC. It is true that the first film left a great taste in our mouths – within its limitations, of course – but we didn’t want to put our hand in the fire with this new production. We all know what they say, second parts were never good, and in this case… neither was it good nor bad.
The story follows closely the original events that were shown in the movie released in 2015 and, beware, because it is open season and this smells like a franchise. This time, journalists and TV shows are still trying to shed light on the events of 2009, when a Halloween house of terror, ‘Hell House’, a simple attraction, claimed the lives of more than 15 people at its opening. Many of the bodies were never even found and the organizers disappeared. Now it’s back to what was once the Abbadon Hotel, where a strange occultist practiced dark rites with his cult before committing group suicide.
As you can see, the story in general doesn’t look bad. Is this second film partly forced? Well, in part yes, we won’t deny it. However, it is to be welcomed that its creators have studied their first film in depth and have proposed one thing: to exploit what worked then, and reverse the most negative points. The problem is that, after the effort, the first part is still much better.
Perhaps, those of you who have seen both, will not agree so much with the latter. Hell House II has gained in intensity, it has risked more, it is no longer so suggestive, it gets wet from the beginning. With this they have remedied the main problem that the first installment had, since it took too long to exploit the real terror. Because of this, a great mockumentary was achieved that pursued a very different goal than this one, which was to focus more on the Halloween horror house theme. The downside of being so linear and realistic is that the beginning could get tiresome.
What do we find in this sequel? An attempt to lighten the narrative that ends up annoying. That is, from the beginning we assumed that we were facing a film composed of fragments of found footage. What happens is that, on this occasion, too many periods of time are intermingled, without ever being entirely clear what is present, what has happened and why we already know part of the future.
Without encountering an overly remarkable performance, it is undeniable that in the heart of the film there are moments of tension. It seems unbelievable how a small building gives so much of itself. The glitches of the camera or the sudden turning off of lights, simple techniques but, at the same time, effective in this case, also help. Very important is that Hell House never looks for an easy scare, a point in its favor. And you can get to be scared at some point. The clowns and the strange apparitions that walk around the house are back. And in the meantime, we are left with the details that take place in the background, something that we personally like. For example, earlier this year we already insisted on it with Reclusion (2016), or It follows (2014).
The best news is that with these latest independent productions, horror films based on found footage and mockumentary seem to come out of a very deep well into which they had fallen after their overexploitation. We recently talked in the Shack about the bad vibe that Gonjiam Haunted Asylum gave us, and once again we came across another acceptable film. The problem, as we have already said, has been that Hell House II has not managed to escape from the shadow of its predecessor, and this has had a negative influence on its final rating.
Of course, those who liked the first film should continue to enjoy it. For those who didn’t, it’s better to watch the 2015 film first. Even so, those who want to skip this recommendation will not have too much difficulty, since an attempt is made to contextualize what happened in the previous case quite complete. The only thing is that several of the characters from then reappear in this one. And, of course, not recommended for those who can’t stand the chaotic home recordings and the amateur look.
