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The Evil (1978) / Hell House LLC (2015)




 This 1978 supernatural horror film is about a husband and wife, both doctors, who purchase an old mansion so they can restore it and open a rehabilitation center. The house, however, has other plans.















C.J. and Caroline Arnold are excited about their plans for a rehabilitation center. They recruit a group of C.J.'s former students to start with the task of cleaning the place to get it up and ready. The wife Caroline immediately notices strange things, like fleeting glimpses of a misty figure. She passes these occurrences off as her imagination and continues to help with the cleaning. Things get weirder when a dog belonging to one of the students wanders off and suddenly becomes aggressive. C.J. eventually finds a trapdoor in the basement and opens it. This causes an evil force to be unleashed. All the windows and doors suddenly lock, trapping everyone inside. As they try to escape, they become witnesses to increasing paranormal activity that threatens their lives.













Boy, was this movie bad, featuring a bunch of cliches you'd see in a haunted house flick: the stubborn man who ignores his wife’s concerns and his own experiences in lieu of a more logical explanation, the sweet pet that gets possessed and goes crazy, the screaming, hysterical woman who gets slapped, an old book that holds the key to the mystery, and people wandering off by themselves after insisting they all stick together. The climax leads to a showdown with the Devil himself, played by a campy Victor Buono, who still thinks he's in an episode of the 1966 Batman series and not a horror film. Despite having decent actors, the script and direction has their performances come off as laughably bad. Richard Crenna just looks tired in most scenes, like he's reluctantly collecting a paycheck. As a scary movie, it fails miserably. As a comedy, it's fun and entertaining, featuring lots of screaming, funny, predictable deaths and unscary nonsense. This one is on Tubi.











The next entry in my “haunted house” double feature was this 2015 found footage horror about a documentary crew who investigate the circumstances surrounding a tragedy that occurred 5 years ago at a haunted house tour.






The movie begins with news articles and a few interviews detailing how, on the opening night of a haunted house attraction, chaos broke out, with people scrambling to get out of there. When all was said and done, there were multiple deaths and even more questions. They meet up with the only surviving crew member, Sara, who gives them a videotape of the events that lead up to the event. While one person scans the footage, another interviews Sara. The film goes back and forth between Sara's testimony and footage showing she and her fellow colleagues arriving at the abandoned hotel and working on getting it ready for their Halloween haunted house attraction, right up to opening night. As the footage continues, it becomes apparent that something is not right in that house, as several of the employees experience bizarre phenomena that they can't explain.

















This is another one that I've heard mentioned a lot whenever someone would ask for recommendations for found footage horror. It starts out just ok, with the news clips and the newscaster almost sounding like an AI voice. Once we get to the footage, there are a few uninspired scares, such as footage that pans around the room, where, for a brief glimpse, you can see a shadowy figure in the corner. Then, to make sure you didn't miss it, the clip repeats and freezes on the image. Thankfully, the film does get better as it progresses, with some pretty effective scares, including a creepy clown prop that keeps appearing in random places, just standing there and staring at the crew. It eventually leads to opening night, when the employees of the haunted house quickly realize that something is wrong, and everyone inside panics and scrambles, desperate to get out. There's also a nice little twist at the end. Hell House LLC is an effective found footage horror movie that, despite a few cliches, does a decent job of delivering simple but convincing scares. It's available to stream on Tubi.
















 

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