13 Days to Halloween: Found footage film 'Hell House LLC' crafts compelling scares

For the '13 Days to Halloween' series, I collect, watch, and write about 13 brilliant and spooky 'underseen' movies that more people need to see. Note that I did not use the term 'underrated', as I believe they were just overlooked for various reasons, and not necessarily rated lower than they deserve. The films are ranked worst to best, in my opinion. The series will end on October 31 with the film that I think is the best and scariest little-known horror flick.

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Stephen Cognetti's 'Hell House LLC' is a little-known gem in the found-footage sub-genre of horror. Also written by Cognetti, the film is framed as a documentary being made on a tragic incident on the opening night of a haunted house attraction on the outskirts of New York City. The authorities are not very forthcoming as to exactly what happened, and people are curious about the tragedy, which left fifteen people and all but one of the staff members dead.

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The documentary crew, to try to piece together the events of that fateful night, interviews the surviving member of the staff, Sara Havel (Ryan Jennifer Jones). Sara provides them with recorded footage of events preceding the incident. And that footage makes up most of the movie.

The location of the haunted house was an abandoned hotel called Abbadon. It was in a state of utter dilapidation and a lot of work needed to be done before it would be ready to be converted into a haunted house. Alex Taylor (Danny Bellini), his girlfriend Sara, and his friends Andrew “Mac” McNamara (Adam Schneider), Tony Prescott (Jared Hacker), and Paul O'Keefe (Gore Abrams) arrive to do the job. After getting electricity started, they start to spend all their time at the place, including nights. Things begin to go bump in the night. Scary dummies, meant to be used when the attraction opens, seemingly walk on their own.

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Typically, for me, found-footage films suck. There are probably less than half a dozen films of that kind that really are worth spending time on. Hell House LLC' is one such rare flick. It is startlingly scary, eschewing jump scares in favour of creepy production design and tension. But more than anything, one can see the director and his crew were working on a tight budget, and yet managed to build compelling, unpredictable scares thanks to clever use of light and camera work.

Watch'Hell House LLC' on Tubi.