Brendan Jesus
Honestly, I have no clue what is happening within our genre. The world is literally falling apart day by day, and this wonderful community we share was my one solace. Both sides of the aisle are filling threads on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, to name a few, with gatekeeping and personal attacks on subjects like elevated horror, politics in horror, and reboots. Obviously, the latter topic is definitely in reference to Halloween Ends, though this is not the only reboot in the past few years to cause such extreme reactions. All of my Twitter doomscrolling was getting me down, until I scrolled past one thing in particular…the trailer for Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor. This may just be the film our genre needs at this time.
Writer/Director Stephen Cognetti is bringing the next terrifying (looking) installment in the Hell House LLC franchise. As someone who absolutely loves found footage, I hold the first two Hell House movies in quite high regard, but the third not as much (although I still really enjoy it). I really thought this franchise had come to an end, and I guess I was okay with that. The Hell House series found a way to take a tired subgenre and inject life (death) into it while making some scary ass movies. There are very few horror films I cannot watch in the complete dark, and this franchise includes some of them. Something about Cognetti’s directing style and how well he works with his cinematographers to capture truly haunting images makes these films work perfectly for me.
I appreciate the first film for what it is, but one of the most interesting additions to Hell House is the lore. It would have been easy for Cognetti to write a flat-out ghost house found footage movie and just call it a day, but the way Cognetti weaves the lore of the Abaddon Hotel throughout the first three films creates a winding tale of death, despair, and horror. I think the end of Hell House III: Lake of Fire is a fitting end for the original story, so I’m happy Cognetti is taking Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor in a different direction from the first three movies.
Carmichael Manor looks like it will be bringing us an origin story of Patrick Carmichael, the clown-mask-donning antagonist the franchise has somewhat become known for. Carmichael missed Andrew Tully’s mass suicide pact, but through archival photos we see he still managed to go to the Abadon Hotel and hang himself. What I like about this idea is that it could possibly lead to an origin film on Andrew Tully or some of the other demonic spirits who reside in the Abaddon, but my personal hope is that we get something like Hell House LLC: 2024, which could totally be a social media influencer horror film a la Deadstream.
Unfortunately, we are going to have to wait a full year for Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor, as its current release timeframe is set for fall 2023. Just like Hell House III: Lake of Fire this new installment in the freak found-footage franchise is set to be a Shudder exclusive.
