HELL HOUSE LLC III: LAKE OF FIRE (2019)

Studio:      Shudder
Director:    Stephen Cognetti
Writer:      Stephen Cognetti
Producer:  Joe Bandelli
Stars:     Gabriel T. Chytry, Elizabeth Vermilyea, Sam Kazzi, Scott Richey, Brian David Tracy, Theodore Bouloukos, Duane Cooper, Leo DeFriend, Bridgid Abrams, Jordan Kaplan, Olivia Roldan

Review Score:

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Summary:

A TV reporter uncovers an unexpected story when a mysterious entrepreneur uses the reportedly haunted Abaddon Hotel as the site of his new immersive theater production.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Author Robert Lyons frames a new documentary about the reportedly cursed Abaddon Hotel. Nine years after the deaths of the Hell House LLC team and one year after an investigative film crew’s disappearance, the hotel was slated for demolition. However, wealthy media entrepreneur Russell Wynn purchased the property to turn it into the site of “Insomnia,” an immersive theater production based on “Faust.”

September 16th, 2018 – Accompanied by her cameraman Louie, new “Morning Mysteries” host Vanessa Shepherd arrives to profile Russell’s production from behind the scenes. Vanessa meets Russell’s COO Jeff Stone, production designer Harvey, and actors Gregory Sandvick, Jane Maloney, Max Stubbs, and Isabel.

While touring the hotel, Vanessa feels a presence watching her. Jeff mentions that the cast and crew have dubbed that phenomenon “Abaddon eyes.” Louie later shows Vanessa footage of a dark figure standing in the shadows near her.

Vanessa interviews Father Paulis, a priest at All Saints Church who was hired by Russell as a consultant. When Vanessa asks about occultist Andrew Tully supposedly finding a gateway to Hell at the hotel, Father Paulis mentions that Abaddon is the demon guard some have heard saying “the gate is open” in Latin.

Vanessa interviews Russell on former fairgrounds where tragedy struck a haunted hayride long before Hell House. Vanessa finds a discarded Ouija planchette used by psychic medium Brock Davies one year earlier.

September 21st, 2018 – Jane accepts a drunken dare to go into the basement alone and touch a prop clown. Jane does not see several ghosts stalking behind her. One of the ominous clowns mysteriously moves, inspiring a fit of hysteria. Jane quits the show, but Russell woos her back by promising to double her pay.

Isabel quits the production following a frightening encounter with Sara Havel’s ghost. Subsequent examination of Isabel’s social media selfies taken inside the hotel show her stalked by several dead members of the original Hell House team.

Max mentions that Russell seems like a changed person since a near-death car crash permanently scarred his face in 2008. After a frightening encounter with Jessica Fox’s ghost, Vanessa insists on speaking with Russell, but Russell is dismissively unconcerned about Vanessa’s fears regarding the haunted hotel.

During a lighting test, a ghoul briefly brushes Harvey in the darkness. Gregory has an ominous conversation with Sara Havel’s ghost, who suddenly vanishes when Vanessa and Jeff interrupt.

September 30th, 2018 – Vanessa relaxes with the production’s cast and crew at a bar. Russell curiously advises Vanessa to not attend opening night. Russell then whispers something to Vanessa before leaving.

Vanessa insists on speaking with Father Paulis immediately. Vanessa asks if Andrew Tully really did find the gate to Hell in the hotel and wonders if Russell is planning to have hundreds of people cross over too. Thinking he is off the record, Paulis confesses to Vanessa that Russell arranged to liquidate all of his assets at midnight and asked Paulis to disperse the money to different charities.

Vanessa’s producer Sam Frost appears in the documentary to accompany rediscovered footage of the Hell House team from April 2009 and the journalists from October 2017. Surprisingly, Russell Wynn is seen in the background of both clips.

October 1st, 2018 – On Insomnia’s opening night, Vanessa’s news story about Russell’s asset liquidation causes concern among cast and crew. Jeff confronts Russell to ask what is really going on, but the production opens to the public as planned.

During the first show, a creepy clown suddenly appears in the wine room. Andrew Tully appears to Russell and they have a cryptic confrontation.

Tully interrupts the performance to brutally kill Gregory. Panic ensues as people rush to find exits. Cloaked cultists emerge from the basement and begin killing patrons and actors.

A cultist drags Vanessa’s body to Tully in the basement. Russell arrives to wrestle with Tully in front of a fiery portal as the ceiling crumbles around everyone.

The next day, the news reports that all of the patrons and performers were found unharmed in the cornfields behind the hotel. Fire destroyed the hotel and Russell remains missing.

Vanessa tells Jeff that she believes they all died, but Russell brought them back to life. Recalling how Russell died for two minutes during his 2008 accident, Vanessa theorizes Russell was an angel sent to close the gateway to Hell.

The original Hell House LLC team seemingly comes back to life inside the mysteriously intact hotel. However, they discover they are unable to leave. Identifying himself as the one who closed the gate they opened, Russell explains they are ghosts who cannot leave because the hotel took their lives. The Hell House team accepts their fate.

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Review:

Review scores aren’t as comparatively relative to each other as some might think. If they were, I suppose I’d have to rate “Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire” with a 40/100.

I was tough on the first “Hell House LLC” (review here), only awarding it a 45. That doesn’t mean I didn’t find the movie without merit. In particular, I admired the finale’s effective sense of trampling panic. This third chapter isn’t as adept at capturing claustrophobia on camera. As a penalty for not being as eerie or as engrossing, “Lake of Fire” would have to rank lower.

“Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel” (review here) took an unanticipated turn for the worse from the first film. Its choppy editing felt careless. Its confounding fiction felt like it wasn’t fully thought through. By virtue of being more tightly focused both technically and narratively than this predecessor, “Lake of Fire” would thus deserve to score higher than “The Abaddon Hotel’s” undesirable 35.

Instead of meeting in the middle at 40, 50/100 seems more objectively appropriate for “Hell House LLC III.” I obviously wasn’t a fan of the first two films, so it’s not shocking that I won’t be joining the cheerleading squad for this third chapter either. But “Lake of Fire” doesn’t have to appeal to me. “Hell House LLC” garnered a devoted fan following, even though many agreed “The Abaddon Hotel” took a dip in quality. Therefore, 50 isn’t an indicator that “Lake of Fire” is qualitatively “better” than its predecessors. It’s merely a concession that “Hell House LLC III” remains consistent with the series’ style and storyline, so viewers are likely to land on the same side of the 50/50 line that they fell the first two times around.

Despite the original Hell House haunt crew dying there in 2009 and an investigative journalism team going missing in 2017, people can’t stay away from New York’s supposedly cursed Abaddon Hotel. Russell Wynn, a wealthy media entrepreneur conspicuously mentioned yet never seen in “Hell House LLC II,” saved the site from a deserved bulldozing. Now the paranormal property is set up to host Wynn’s new immersive theater production “Insomnia.”

“Morning Mysteries,” a local news show that also appeared in the previous film, has been invited to tape behind the scenes as cast and crew prepare for opening night. In a vacuum, I might not think much of Elizabeth Vermilyea as on-camera host Vanessa Shepherd. Thinking back to the poor performance of her predecessor however, Vermilyea is marginally more believable as a field anchor, although she clearly isn’t a reporter for her day job. Compared to the alternately campy or cringey performances all over “Hell House LLC II,” “Lake of Fire” at least trades up to a cast that is acceptably inconsistent, which is preferable to being predominantly awful.

Acting still reads as amateur on multiple occasions, but there are more tolerable hits than there are total misses. Sam Kazzi as Russell Wynn’s right-hand man moves with the authority of a project manager truly focused on getting sh*t done without being an unlikable prick about it. Scott Richey gets in good, albeit spare, licks of comic relief as animated production designer Harvey. Speaking to both the mystery and the misery of putting together a play in a haunted hotel, Harvey quips, “this has been the least enjoyable production I’ve worked on, and I have done children’s theater in Alabama.”

Conversely, it’s not a surprise that Gabriel Chytry, who plays Russell Wynn, has “Hell House LLC III” listed as his only released feature credit on IMDb. Wynn plays “Lake of Fire’s” most critical role roster-wise, yet filmmakers cast someone out of his depth to play an enigmatic millionaire man of leisure. I might buy Chytry as an indie art gallery owner at best. As a peer to Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos ? Chytry doesn’t have the charisma to manufacture similar mystique, or the acting experience to fake it.

While it is more competently put together than its immediate predecessor, “Lake of Fire” fumbles with a few questionable techniques too. “Hell House LLC III’s” camerawork isn’t as slapdash as “Hell House LLC II’s,” although there are errant frame-ups such as a foreground light bulb getting in the way of one character’s face and other noticeable gaffes like that. Remember, the pretense is that we are watching the *third* documentary about The Abaddon Hotel. Yet the movie still uses pixilated garble to transition between footage from the first two films, never mind the illusion of supposedly being a professional-grade production.

I’ve only viewed “Hell House LLC” and “Hell House LLC II” once each in their respective release years of 2016 and 2018. I imagine watching all three in a single sitting would be a challenge of stamina no matter how patient the viewer. All three films are similar in terms of using two-thirds of their runtimes to gradually build toward a frenetic climax. By the time we arrive at “Lake of Fire,” sticking to this played-out formula results in regressive routine that’s difficult to find compelling.

“Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel” left off with an unusually bonkers conclusion that took the first film’s grounding in quasi-normalcy and shredded it with inter-dimensional occultism, paranormal possession, and cryptic conspiracies. On its surface, dialing “Lake of Fire” back to be more in line with I than II in terms of far-out fantasy makes sense, especially since many reacted unfavorably to “The Abaddon Hotel’s” acceleration into unrealistic insanity. Then again, starting “Lake of Fire’s” scares with a creepy clown turning his head or a shape standing still in the shadows no longer packs the punch “Hell House LLC” has been preparing its long-term followers for.

Put simply, “Hell House LLC III” becomes a victim of its restrictive DNA. “Lake of Fire” is the third film founded on identical concepts of a theater troupe and camera crew setting up shop in the same haunted hotel only to be casually creeped out for an hour until a fiery finale. “Lake of Fire” feels the fatigue of having every drop drained from this well. I’m incapable of picturing what a fourth film would even look like given how trampled this ground has become. Seeing as how “Hell House LLC II” hinted at this sequel’s direction by name-dropping Russell Wynn, creator Stephen Cognetti could instead be setting up a prequel with this movie’s meaningless mention of a nearby fairgrounds tragedy predating the deaths at Hell House.

Review Score: 50

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