HELL HOUSE LLC: LINEAGE (2025)

New streaming on Shudder!
Directed/Written by Stephen Cognetti.
Check out the trailer here!!

Vanessa (Elizabeth Vermilyea) was one of the few survivors of HELL HOUSE LLC: LAKE OF FIRE aka HELL HOUSE LLC Three and still suffers from nightmares about the experience. When Bobby (Bo Bogle) another survivor of the Abaddon Hotel incident dies, Vanessa is compelled to investigate her dreams which seem to be seeping into her reality. Meanwhile, a reporter (Searra Sawka) is attempting to find a priest in order to exorcise the Abaddon Hotel and rid it of the evil that has surrounded the Abaddon Hotel and the Carmichael Manor for ages.

I guess that is what HELL HOUSE LLC: LINEAGE is about, but honestly, I guess I didn’t do the required viewing and rewatch the entire series in order to get a lot of the references Cognetti drops throughout this story. But here’s the thing. Stan Lee once said a very wise thing. Every comic is someone’s first read. And every movie, no matter the number of movies in a franchise, ESPECIALLY when said franchise has dropped the roman numeral in the title indicating what order this film should be watched in, may be someone’s first. It seems Cognetti is under the impression that everyone has been feverishly waiting for this sequel and knows the lore inside and out. I’m sure HELL HOUSE has its die hard fans, but this ain’t STAR WARS.

First and foremost, the lead was in the HELL HOUSE series from two movies ago, which was released in 2019. That was six years ago. How in the hell are we supposed to remember her? Given that this is a series that treats the horrors as if they are clips found and played by the authorities, which makes it a found footage film, why the hell was there not some kind of recap where we see the footage of Vanessa undergoing these horrors. I understand that in found footage films, one isn’t able to put things like dream sequences or flashbacks in the narrative. But Cognetti made this installment in the regular, cinematically filmed way. Why wouldn’t Cognetti utilize the flashback to clue the viewer in as to who the hell this woman from two movies ago is and what traumatized her? He doesn’t. And that leaves a huge hole in the film where they are talking and explaining the horrors rather than simply, you know, using the visual format of film to show us some of these traumatic moments from the past.

There is also reference to two other people who have survived encounters at the Abaddon Hotel or the Carmichael Manor, and in both instances we are told about the experience instead of shown these horrific encounters. Yet later, the film folds up over itself numerous times in dream sequences where Vanessa is transported to the Carmichael Manor via her nightmares. Sure, I guess if you saw HELL HOUSE LLC: ORIGINS – THE CARMICHAEL MANOR, which was released two years ago, you might remember the two gals filming the vlog in the house. But again, instead of giving the viewer a touchstone or some context, Vanessa finds herself in a dream on the Carmichael Manor grounds, and we see a few scenes from the fourth film play out from different angles.

The problem is that I think Cognetti believes we as viewers should remember all of these actors from previous films and the actions they made. I said in my review of HELL HOUSE LLC: III – LAKE OF FIRE that this film was in danger of over-convoluting its plot. That was two movies ago. Now, the lore Cognetti has established is expanded upon and made even more convoluted by introducing yet another location, some kind of mysterious shack in the middle of nowhere, as another place where these horrors from the past have occurred. Cognetti is in need of a reality check if he thinks I’m going to make my own Venn diagram in order to make sense of it all.

My advice, simplify. Simplify. Simplify. There is no need to have the location of the horrors be at three places. Make it occur in one place. Also, don’t assume anyone has seen your previous films. If you need them to see the other films, don’t take out the roman numerals in the title. Still, I shouldn’t have to do homework in order to understand your movie. There is a reveal in the final seconds of the movie where someone pulls their hood back to reveal their face and Vanessa says his name and I was like, who the fuck is that supposed to be? Cognetti needs some perspective with this series, understanding what works and what doesn’t and paring the whole lore thing down to bare bones if he ever returns to this series. And with the film ending on a cliffhanger, how the hell are they promoting that this is the last in the series.

But lore aside, you may be asking, what about scares? Suspense? Gore? And my answer to that is that yes, there are a few good ideas and a smattering of decently directed scenes of suspense. One occurs towards the beginning when a man finds himself alone at a carnival—yet another location with key significance to the convoluted plot, I might add, where he encounters one of the clown mannequins. The other occurs during the exorcism scene where a corpse under a sheet screams while the priest recites the lord’s prayer. That was genuinely a scary scene. Now, gore? There is little by way of anything we haven’t seen a million times before. One guy gets his neck torn out. A few others die unremarkably.

One of the main issues of the film is the pacing. I feel that this film is in desperate need of a quality editor. Scenes linger on forever. There are shots that linger even after both actors leave the frame. The pauses in dialog make everything feel like the most amateur of filmmaking. It’s insane that Cognetti, who made four found footage films which move at such a frantic and frenetic pace, would hit the brakes this abruptly and snail crawl it through this entire film.

Now, I’m not going to say that lead actress Elizabeth Vermilyea is a bad actress, but man does she have resting bland face. She is that way through almost the entire movie. Just a non-expressional face with concerned eyebrows moving from one scene to the next. I don’t see this as Vermilyea’s fault. Cognetti just didn’t give her anything to do but mope from one side of the screen to the other for an hour and forty minutes.

Finally, the clown mannequins themselves. The thing that made the clowns so creepy was that they would move, but the movement would be off-screen. The camera would look at the mannequin, and it would be in one position, then look away, and then go back and the clown’s head or hand would move and the person behind the camera, along with the viewer at home would say, “Did that motherfucker just move?” That’s what made the clowns so scary. The fact that we knew they moved but didn’t see it. Well, in HELL HOUSE LCC: LINEAGE they move. They run. They walk briskly. They creep around corners They lurk in the shadows. And you know what? Seeing them in motion kills any and all fright factor they had from the previous films. They just look like guys in baggy clown costumes because…that’s what they are!!!

I loved the first HELL HOUSE LLC. The second one was good as well. I tolerated the third one, knowing that wrapping up a trilogy was always hard, and giving Cognetti the benefit of the doubt. With ORIGINS, the fourth installment, Cognetti went back to the roots of the first one and simply made a creepy movie in an old house. It was simple but effective. All the while, the only thing bogging the entire series down was the lore. With HELL HOUSE LLC: LINEAGE, Cognetti dives headfirst into the lore and none of it warrants the leap from found footage to the really real world. There just seems to be a lack of understanding of what HELL HOUSE LLC is—it’s a found footage franchise built on scenes of growing tension and creepy clowns that don’t move, but somehow move off camera. The lore, at this point, is impenetrable. There are characters who show up in the last act that had me completely stumped as to who they were, not including the final reveal that lands like an elephant turd dropped from a great height. While I understand Cognetti’s aspiration to prove himself as a legit filmmaker and drop the found footage POV, the filmmaker proved to me that this wasn’t the case with the previous 825 FOREST ROAD and seals the deal with HELL HOUSE LLC: LINEAGE, that he just isn’t ready for prime time yet and should stick with what he knows and does best. I am sorry to be so harsh on the filmmaker, but man o man, was this one -a huge disappointment.