Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire (2019)

The moment that I discovered that there was a third Hell House LLC film, I was excited. It’s been a while since I was looking forward to a film and the only problem with looking forward to something is that there is the possibility that you will be disappointed. Thankfully I can say that I wasn’t disappointed with this third instalment. The setup of the film is that the hotel was due to be demolished and then it got purchased. The hotel was bought by Russell Wynn and this was the first time that I recall the name but if you watch the other films there is a reference in the second one.

He is a millionaire and a bit strange. As the film progresses there is the nice backstory for him that does tie in nicely with what is happening in this film. It’s a subplot that is bubbling away nicely and then towards the end the full story is revealed and I thought it worked quite well. Insomnia is the new name for the hotel and it does get mentioned in the previous film and it was the right way to carry on without rehashing the Hell House name because it would be a bit implausible to expect people to willingly work in a house still named Hell House after everything that happened there.

The cast members who work at the hotel know of what happened and whilst this film says that there are films, at least they say that the events in it are real. They take the unusually sensible steps to avoid anything going wrong but as you would expect things do go wrong. I like how they remind us of things that happened in the previous films. Some might be bothered that the film is signposting things for us but I don’t mind.
I also thought there were some quite creepy moments. When Jane is dared into going into the basement and the creepy clown goes from looking straight ahead and then is seen looking to its left. I quite liked the camera that seemed to be on the spinning plate in the bar and is going around showing people being killed and then quickly moving on.
The film does feature some terrible special effects. There was some questionable effects in the previous film but here it looks truly terrible. It’s a shame really because the film hasn’t had to rely too much of special effects. Yet the effects done to make the tape quality change are good.

Where I also have an issue with the film is the ending. The titles for this film come up and then there is a reveal about what happened to the people from the other films. This film did not need that. They could have ended at the titles. Also there is a slight continuity error because the woman had long hair in the first film and then her hair is shorter in this film. If they had put this earlier in the film then it would have been relevant but at the end it seemed to be an odd place and an odd way to end the film.
As a whole, I thought that Hell House LLC 3: Lake of Fire was better than the second one. It’s not perfect but its got some good moments. I thought the characters were better as I didn’t find any of them annoying or they did anything that I found stupid or annoying. This is the best place for them to end this series. I think that they have done pretty much everything they can with this house and they shouldn’t do anymore here.

Haunt (2019)

Haunt is a horror film from the writers of A Quiet Place which I liked. The setup of the film is that a group of people visit a haunted house (sort of) and then things go badly wrong. The idea of haunted/horror houses are becoming more and more common in films in recent years. I have seen my fair share and the most part tend to be rather average but this one of the better ones. Things get off to a slightly shaky start when our lead character Harper (Katie Stevens) is applying make up to cover a bruise and that is when I questioned what sort of film this was going to be. The abusive boyfriend subplot really went nowhere. Firstly it was always a risky thing to put in a horror film but then there was a period of time where it seemed like he was going to be the saviour of the film but then he gets killed off within a few moments of arriving. What the point of his character still fails me.

The way that they find out about the haunted house is rather poor. Evan picks up a poster off the floor. They could have worked out a better way of introducing this but it is what it is. The ending is also quite strange. They go to the trouble of having Harper and the other one escape and make it to the hospital and then when one of the clowns barges into Harper’s house which resembles the home from Home Alone and then she is about to shoot the clown. That’s the end of the film which was more upbeat than most horror films but left a lot of questions which I don’t feel deserved to be left unanswered.

The thing that I quite liked about this film is that the characters weren’t annoying. I thought they were a bit two dimensional but on the whole they were relatively annoying-free. Katie Stevens is the best thing in the film because she has the most interesting story and yet is the smarter of the group. Yes she does make the mistake of stabbing Bailey but nobody’s perfect. The way that people get killed is quite good. The one with the pointy dude getting killed because Harper moves his head in line with the shotgun was particularly good.

The film is well directed. All the rooms were very grim and seemed like they were straight out of a Saw film (which to be honest I’ve never seen). I was never bored even though there were some aspects of the plot that didn’t quite make sense. It started off quite well and then in the final act did seem to descend into every other kind of horror film. However there were more good things in it than bad. The gore does make a lot of sense when you watch the credits and discover that Eli Roth was a producer and he was one of the key people behind the torture porn genre that popped up about a decade ago. Thankfully the directors managed to wrestle most of the torture porn away from the story and have an ok movie.