Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor review
Shudder brings us a genuinely scary movie to close out spooky season. Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is a masterful example in building and sustaining atmosphere.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor
Directed by Stephen Cognetti
Written by Stephen Cognetti
Starring Bridget Rose Perrotta, Destiny Leilani Brown, James Liddell, Gideon Berger, Cayla Berejikian and Victoria Andrunik
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor Review
Full disclosure: I’ve never seen the movies to which Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor serves as an apparent prequel. The original Hell House LLC made a sizable impact upon its release in 2015/16. Despite missing it (and its two sequels), I’m happy to report that the series has added a high-quality installment in 2023. In fact, you could easily argue that Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is the scariest movie of 2023.
Fans of the franchise will have to forgive anything in this review that comes across as ignorant of the series. My excuse is…I’m ignorant of the series. I may not know why there are clowns or what the Abaddon Hotel is…but I know scary when I see it. And Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is scary. The movie plays out mostly as found footage. It intercuts talking heads segments discussing what we’re going to see. The template simply works. I can only assume that previous entries in the series did the same thing. We’ve also seen the two Horror in the High Desert movies utilize it to great effect. As I mentioned in those reviews…it’s like watching Unsolved Mysteries with found footage in the place of reenactments. Which is just about the scariest combination imaginable.
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is the story of three people who decide to spend five nights at an infamous mansion in Rockland County, NY. The movie lays out the full backstory of the deaths and disappearances that took place there. Margot (Bridget Rose Perrotta) and her girlfriend Rebecca (Destiny Leilani Brown) head to the manor to film their experience. Margot’s brother Chase (James Liddell) joins them shortly after their arrival.
The movie documents their stay…steadily building atmosphere and tension along the way. By night three…Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is downright terrifying. It begins with an opening explanation about what we’re going to see…letting us know straight away that there is no happy ending for these characters. It works as a countdown in your head to certain horror. Writer/director Stephen Cognetti has a lot of tricks up his sleeve to make each night more intense than the last.
It takes the movie a little while to start ratcheting up the scares…but it never feels slow. Everything that happens before the creepiness sets in serves to fill in the backstory of the house’s history. We learn about Margot’s history too. She’s obsessed with chasing down these alleged haunted houses. To the point where her brother sides with Rebecca over her when the time comes to consider cutting their stay short.
The first time we see that something isn’t right happens while Rebecca is filming herself. The bed behind her is covered in blood and holds the body of a Carmichael murder victim. She never sees it. That one’s just for us. It’s the only time in the movie that the characters are unaware of the horrors that surround them. Things escalate quickly from there. From finding terrifying clown mannequins to hearing noises around the house…the characters are inundated with terrifying things. Chase, while wandering the manor alone, sees a girl in a mask peeking around a corner. He captures it on camera so we (and they) can confirm it’s real. This would be the moment people should be leaving the property. It’s only day two.
Footage of the Carmichael family from 1989 is shown throughout the movie as well. It lets us know who is behind that mask…and that they died the day the 1989 footage was shot. An inspired use of photographs on a computer screen ramp things up to the point that Rebecca and Chase want to exit the manor on day three. It’s one of the more clever and frightening ideas we’ve seen lately…and it’s executed to perfection. There are a lot of fun things that happen over the remaining days and nights in the house. For my money…night three is as scary as anything we’ve seen in horror this year.
We don’t want to spoil all the tricks that the movie has to reveal. We know what the fates of the characters will be…and we get to watch it unfold in the found footage. While knowing these things from the start helps the movie sustain some real frightening atmosphere…it does inevitably force the climax to underwhelm a little in comparison. It’s a worthy trade given how effective Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is from the start.
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor has some genuinely scary moments. Moments on par with the best we’ve seen this year. It builds and sustains tension from its great opening on. Cognetti wastes no opportunity to scare the living daylights out of you. One of the most effective pure horror films of the year in terms of generating sustained frights. If you have the desire to get a bit freaked out…head over to Shudder and push play on the latest Hell House movie. Just watch out for those damned clowns.
Scare Value
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor is one of the scariest movies of the year. Maybe the scariest. It reaches peaks of tension that you won’t find in most films. The found footage aspect doesn’t distract at all…Cognetti has clearly mastered his chosen format. You don’t have to be familiar with the previous films to enjoy this one. I’m sure that it would deepen the meaning of certain things…but the frights…they work either way.
4/5
Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor Link
Streaming on Shudder
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