If you’re a fan of the Hell House franchise, you might be surprised to learn there’s a new sequel out! And it’s not found footage! Wow! And it’s also really bad!
The script is terrible. One of the first scenes of present day (which, oddly enough, looks like the 90’s/early 20’s for some reason) is of a therapist doing highly illegal things by literally calling the protagonist to an unscheduled session to share highly personal info about another client. Wow. What a terrible plot device to get not really super important information across. And it’s not even close to the stupidest thing in the script!
The protagonist is terrible. I get people can be depressed as fuck in real life, and passive as fuck in real life, but this is a movie – if you have a depressed as fuck protagonist, they need to be active. Even if they’re actively avoiding situations, that’s still active. Cross the road, pretend to get a call, anything to not have to do whatever it is they need to do! But this bitch walked into every situation crying and then went with the flow. No pushback. No conflict. Just go with the flow with tears and no direction except whatever direction the other characters tell you. Talk to me! Ok. Come here! Ok. Are you ok? Ok.
The other characters are way overacted. This is a horror movie, not an action movie. Knock it off.
And finally, nothing happens. It’s a bunch of low stakes conversations. That’s it. Low stakes conversations with a passive protagonist surrounded by people overacting in situations that don’t make any fucking sense, like a therapist disclosing highly personal things about another client, for however long this movie lasted.
It wasn’t all bad though! The cinematography was great. As was the foley. The rest was shit, and if you’re going into this movie because it has the words “Hell House” in the title, just know it’s not about the Hell House. It’s about a haunting that never really gets explained, but you also don’t really care that it doesn’t because the movie is so bad.
I mean, it is about the Hell House of course, but it leaves out everything that made the original so fun. So at the end of the day, it’s just another substandard movie about a haunting.
