This is another Shudder exclusive movie that you can only watch on Shudder. It's definitely worth it to get access to exclusive content like this. The original "Hell House, LLC" is a found footage type horror movie about a crew trying to set up a haunted house attraction that winds up being haunted by actual evil spirits. It's a better than average found footage movie, definitely one of the best I've seen, so I have high hopes for this sequel.
This movie takes place 8 years after the tragic opening of a hotel in a small town. The hotel from the original "Hell House, LLC" movie. After the deaths that surrounded the original hotel opening, the movie was released, and the people in the town of Abaddon are angry about how their town is portrayed in the movie, so they're suing the filmmakers who made the movie, and the controversy surrounding the original movie has attracted other "ghost hunters" to the hotel, all of whom seem to have disappeared. An investigative journalist is convinced that there's a secret to the mystery still buried somewhere inside the hotel, so she takes a crew and goes into the hotel in search of answers.
I like how this movie pretends that the original Hell House movie was real, and the horrific events from the first movie actually happened, and the movie is about a real town, and the residents in the town are pissed about the release of the movie. It's very meta. If something like this actually happened, I'm sure investigative journalists would be interested in trying to break the story, so that plot feels authentic. The fact that the reporter and her crew are planning to break into the hotel to find evidence, and they want to bring the only survivor from the original film with them to help lead them around the hotel so they don't get lost makes sense. Ok, stupid sense, because we all know the demons are going to get them and they're totally not safe, but it does seem like something that might actually happen, which lends credibility to the plot of the movie.
The main story of the movie is supplemented by other video footage that claims to be from other people who have disappeared in the hotel over the years, and these videos add to the creep factor of the movie. It gets a little confusing and muddled trying to figure out the timeline when the footage keeps jumping back and forth in time, but that does add to the mindfuck nature of the movie. It works pretty well until the end of the movie where everything fly apart and gets WAY too over-explainy with a character standing there literally giving a speech to the camera and saying the same things over and over (and over) again. Dude, we get it. We got it ten minutes ago. Shut up! You're ruining your own movie for fuck's sake. This movie is pretty good, but that scene needs to STFU and be left on the cutting room floor.
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