Hell House LLC (2016): No upgrade necessary

Hell House LLC, 2016, directed by Stephen Cognetti, Prime Video, 3.5 stars.

Hell House LLC is a top-notch found-footage film from 2016. This was a Video On Demand release from writer and director Stephen Cognetti, making his feature-film debut.

It was successful enough that Cognetti has been able to make a career of turning out Hell House LLC movies. His fifth one, subtitled Lineage, landed in August 2025.

In Hell House LLC, a young entrepreneur and his staff go to work converting an abandoned hotel into a haunted-house attraction for the Halloween season. The plot is framed as a documentary crew's investigation five years later into an unexplained "malfunction" on opening night that killed 15 people.

The story is told through video shot by the crew while setting up the attraction -- as well as clips from TV news coverage of opening night and an interview with the crew's only survivor.

Let me interject here: We all know there are two kinds of movie fans, right? Those who like found-footage films and those who don't. I'm in the first camp. I've enjoyed these things ever since I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theater more than 25 years ago.

I'm here to tell you that Hell House LLC is a particularly good one. We see pretty much from the beginning, when our heroes first go to work on this old place, that this hotel is already haunted -- no upgrade necessary. In fact, our crew keeps ignoring signs that intervention is probably not a great idea.

Cognetti delivers the scary, creepy goods with Hell House LLC. The staging is exceptional, the characters are well-written and the acting by an unfamiliar cast is strong. All those are essential elements for making a film like this work.

My Letterboxd rating is 3.5 stars, which means I really enjoyed it. I've seen this twice in the past year or so, and I'll happily visit it again at some point.

I did watch the second film in this series, titled Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel, from 2018. It was a big dropoff, not enough to get me excited about moving onto the third one.

Hell House LLC is on most all the free streaming services, including YouTube. It's also on Prime Video, AMC+ and Shudder. I cannot find a disc release anywhere except in a franchise collection from Umbrella Entertainment.