Margot (Bridget Rose Perrotta) and her girlfriend Rebecca (Destiny Leilani Brown) spend much of their free time visiting the – mostly supposedly haunted – sites of mysterious and unsolved murder cases for Margot’s YouTube channel. Rebecca’s only there for Margot, who tends to get a bit obsessive about “her cases”, whereas Rebecca takes care of the more real business of things like actually earning money when Margot isn’t dragging her around the creepiest parts of America.
For their newest case, Margot has also invited her brother Chase (James Liddell) to join in on the fun – perhaps not the best idea if one keeps in mind he’s just had some kind of mental breakdown.
Particularly since Margot has rented the Carmichael Manor for their newest excursion, the scene of unexplained murder/disappearances, and supposedly so haunted, nobody actually wants to stay there for longer than a night. As it turns out, the place and what happened there is connected to the Abaddon Hotel as known from the other Hell House LLC movies, and comes complete with a set of creepy clown costumes on mannikins that look rather a lot like those creeping around some viewers’ brains since the earlier films in the series. Margot and company will indeed figure out what happened at the Manor, and find it – or something very much like it - happening to themselves to.
I really liked the first Hell House LLC by director/writer Stephen Cognetti a lot, with its mix of genuinely interesting characterisation and creative shocks that made great use of the POV horror format. My interest in the sequels flagged rather heavily – there was so much explaining of the horror’s background myth, I felt myself exposited into disinterest.
That’s not a problem with this fourth Hell House LLC film. Cognetti’s still interested in worldbuilding, but here, he again hits the spot where explanations are hinted at and connections shown instead of explained out loud, leaving the space wide open to create an actual sense of dread.
Which the film does very well indeed. There’s some perfect creepy mood building throughout its first act that creates a delightful feeling of dread which very effectively underpins all of the nice little shocks to come. And Cognetti is truly great at creating little horror set pieces, jump scares and moments of outright creepiness of a type that’s perfect for the POV horror format. There’s nothing of the coyness of not showing anything here that can haunt POV horror/found footage. The direction uses deliberation and intelligence to decide what to show and what to insinuate, combined with an excellent sense of timing to create some memorable moments. The basic creepiness of the clown suits may even detract from how good Cognetti is at this sort of thing.
Which – along with the effective if not deep characterisation – makes Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor a wonderful outing in the series.
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