FilmReviewThree intrepid film-makers set out to investigate spooky goings-on at a remote property. If you suspect this plot was worn out, you’d be wrong
It’s to Hell House franchise creator Stephen Cognetti’s credit that this fourth film in the series manages to lovingly revivify two horror tropes usually to be found mouldering at the back of the genre closet: the found-footage expedition and demonic clowns. That is partly on account of the mythology he has accrued over the last three instalments, centring on occult goings-on at the Abaddon Hotel on New York’s rural outskirts; it is embroidered and deepened by this quasi-prequel, helping fit out those cliches with an unsettlingly long shadow.
Everything in the film is framed by a group of documentary-style talking heads, discussing the tragic attempt of their friend Margot (Bridget Rose Perrotta) to make a true-crime exposé of the Carmichael Manor. This is the site of what, in 1989, appears to have been a double, perhaps triple murder, committed by either father Arthur Carmichael or his son Patrick, the latter of whom in Cognetti’s pileup of Lovecraftian lore turns out to have worked at the cursed hotel. But after the slaughter at the manor, both men disappeared, never to be seen again, into the surrounding snowy woods. Along with her estate-agent girlfriend Rebecca (Destiny Leilani Brown) and mentally ill brother Chase (James Liddell), the suicidally undaunted Margot decides to spend five nights on the supposedly haunted property, cameras at the ready.
The mockumentary structure splices in the Carmichaels’ own home-video footage, which eerily prefigures events unfolding around the three film-makers. Even though they’re fishing for the paranormal, stumbling on a pair of glowering clown mannequins upstairs – which Patrick Carmichael apparently took from the Abaddon – probably counts as a clear sign to make straight for the exit.
It isn’t just Cognetti’s solid deployment of the backstory that impresses; he and cinematographer Josh Layton also show a devious command of camera mechanics, vital to the subjective found-footage experience. The astute positioning and focus to suggest liminal terrors is almost on a par with J-horror’s sharper alumni, managing to wring fresh fear out of old staples such as sinister door-knocks (though perhaps not from red clown noses rolling Shining-style down the hallway). The likes of Ringu were well attuned to the uncanny intrusion of the moving image, and one set piece here – in which Rebecca’s laptop is invaded mid-presentation – is a fine digital-era update on that. Cognetti’s film spins its fireside yarn with an old-timer’s relish.
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is available from 30 October on Shudder.
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