Hell House LLC Finds Life After Death in a New Origin Story

Ever wondered where the creepy clowns—the most unsettling part of Stephen Cognetti’s Hell House LLC found-footage horror series—came from? Enter Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor, the fourth film in the series, which follows an internet sleuth whose cold-case digging unearths fresh frights.

Released in 2015, Hell House LLC distinguished itself from other found-footage flicks with its clever setting; it’s about a group of haunt builders who decide the abandoned Abaddon Hotel is the perfect spot to host their annual spooky attraction, and decide to stay the course even when they realize rumors about the place being actually haunted by its former owner, an alleged occultist, are true. (An added layer of spooky fun comes from the fact that the real-life location is used each year as a Halloween haunt.) An opening-night accident in which several guests and crew are killed turns the place into a lurid destination for publicity seekers, which we see play out in part two, The Abaddon Hotel (about a team of investigative journalists who fall prey to the hotel’s curses), and part three, Lake of Fire, about an immersive theater group that unwisely decides to mount their latest production you-know-where.

Every film in the series, including Carmichael Manor, is styled like a documentary, with talking heads interspersed to provide context and give the viewer a brief respite from scanning every shaky-cam frame looking for lurking spirits. (Every found-footage movie contains its share of corner-of-your-eye jump scares, but the Hell House movies really lean into the idea.) Carmichael Manor takes the action out of the Abaddon Hotel—necessary, since it burned down in Lake of Fire, but also thankfully, because how many more screech-filled trips to that hellmouth basement did we need?—and shifts it to the titular house, a sprawling mansion located in the middle of a vast forest. In 1989, not long after the Abaddon Hotel closed down, a tragedy befell the family dwelling there: the mother and daughter were gruesomely stabbed to death, and the father and son simply vanished.

In the present day, we meet Margot (Bridget Rose Perrotta), a self-styled internet sleuth whose latest obsession is the famously unsolved Carmichael case. She’s given access to the manor for five days, accompanied by her level-headed girlfriend Rebecca (Destiny Brown) and her brother Chase (James Liddell), who’s has some mental-health struggles but is putting on a good face to help Margot out. Everyone has a camera, everyone’s filming all the time, and thanks to Carmichael Manor’s documentary frame story, we know it doesn’t end well for anyone.

Still, there’s suspense to be had as Margot puzzles through vintage clues and discovers what makes Carmichael Manor an origin story for Hell House LLC. Her determination is almost powerful enough to make it seem plausible that the group would stay despite mounting red flags suggesting they should flee the property and never look back. This isn’t Amityville Horror—Margot and company haven’t invested anything but time, so they could leave at any moment, plus the freaky footage they capture early in their visit would be more than enough to bring Margot’s website zillions of clicks. You can’t help but sympathize with Rebecca when she pleads to leave before the five days are up—or later, embodying a classic found-footage horror trope, when she screams at Margot for keeping the camera rolling as the ghostly shit is hitting the fan.

There are a lot of found-footage movies out there, but not many have infused this much detail into their world-building, certainly not enough to sustain four films (though that’s being kind to part three, by far the weakest entry). You don’t need to have seen the other Hell House LLC movies to make it through Carmichael Manor, although being familiar with at least the first film will make the references and Easter eggs more potent. And even if you don’t know any Hell House backstory, Carmichael Manor does a decent job filling in the blanks and weaving its own eerie story. Those damn clowns—who ooze evil despite never speaking and barely moving—do a lot of the heavy lifting though.

Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor starts streaming on Shudder October 30.

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