31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026
13 is “hotel horror” and Shudder has the Hell House LLC series, of which I previously saw the first but Evan at Rocklin Graves says the fourth is good, so... kind of trudged through the second and third parts to get there.
13.
Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel (2018)
Hell House LLC III: Lake Of Fire (2019)
Hell House LLC (2015) is a pretty basic found footage horror with the format twist that the poor fools going into the scary place are there to use it as the location for a haunted attraction. So is the creepy stuff we glimpse really creepy or pretend creepy in-setting?
And the opening moment, news reports and a customer YouTube video showing the crowd going through turning into a stampede to get out works really well.
Apparently the director’s cut adds more trilogy-related context but the original cut is less on the nose so I rewatched it. And then II and III are pretty damn on the nose.
II would have been enough to get me stop without the promise of a better future instalment. A much more normal “go and look at the place we know is meant to be scary” found footage, that ends with a big theatrical villain monologue which explains lore best left vague. It also shows just how much the found footage format relies on acting as a couple of the performances let it down badly.
III swings back to the “use scary place for haunted attraction” setup of the original, with an immersive theatre show instead of a straight haunt, run by an eccentric genius who is also apparently one of the richest people in the world (this does not reflect my experience of the finances of immersive theatre companies) and carries along until an ending that certainly surprised me. It mostly struck me as funny and left me with some questions, both mythological and practical (does it apply to the victims in II who don’t get much of a mention?) but points for trying.
Will I watch the fourth after all this? Later, I guess.
The medium: Shudder
Gameability: Like a lot of found footage filming, haunted attractions and especially immersive theatre, this could easily become a LARP, and at times really feels like watching a recording of one.
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