Working in a truly terrifying haunted house would probably be a little taxing on the psyche. If you’ve ever worked in a bar or retail establishment that plays the same music over and over again, you know that feeling of putting your head down on the pillow only to “hear” the sounds of the day in your mind. It’s kind of like going from water to land. You can still feel the motion on solid ground. It feels like Stephen Cognetti, a talented writer/director, has become so obsessed with his vision that he’s hearing songs we can’t hear. The director of the increasingly popular cult classic “Hell House LLC,” and three sequels of varying quality (along with an excursion into non-“Hell” storytelling with the dismal “825 Forest Road”), Cognetti returns to the Abaddon Hotel, Carmichael Manor, and world of “Hell House” with the stated intention of closing it out in “Hell House LLC: Lineage.” Pardon the skepticism of someone who lived through “Friday the 13th, Part IV: The Final Chapter,” but this is unlikely to be the final word on this franchise, which deserves a better final act.
One of the biggest mistakes with “Lineage” is that Cognetti abandons his strongest asset as a filmmaker: Found footage. In the original, he has an ability to imbue seemingly ordinary footage of people setting up a haunted house with mounting dread. Without the inherent relatability of the lo-fi structure, his deficits as a visual filmmaker are heightened, as is his distinct inability to pace a horror film. This one drags itself through the lore of “Hell House” in a way that’s only interesting to even the most hardcore fans of the franchise, and even they’re likely going to be bored. What’s so frustrating is that he still shows flashes of visual confidence, most often with classic horror tricks, such as something moving out of frame that the protagonist can’t see or a flashing light that obscures both the hero’s and the viewer’s vision. But even the visuals that work don’t have that sense of danger that the best “Hell House” movies engender, and the overwritten plotting drags down any attempt to care about what’s happening or to get lost in the terror.
As the final film in the series, one would expect “Lineage” to close loops from previous entries. But Cognetti opens new ones by digging even deeper into his franchise’s lore, somehow making the other movies less mysterious in the process. There’s nothing less terrifying than over-explanation, but that’s the goal here as Vanessa Shepherd (Elizabeth Vermilyea) tries to get to the bottom of why she’s still haunted by the black-eyed clowns of the Abaddon Hotel. Cognetti sets out to tie Vanessa’s lineage to the events of the Abaddon and the legacy of the Carmichael through lengthy exposition scenes about the events of the previous films. To say you need to have seen them recently is an understatement. This one needs an explainer like David Lynch’s “Dune.”
The truth is, all the dense lore and overwritten scenes of dialogue wouldn’t matter if “Lineage” were more consistently scary. It’s one of those films that mistakes dour for horror. Vermilyea plays Vanessa with such a flat, emotionless affect that she often comes across as sleepy rather than traumatized. It’s more a fault of the writing than the performer, but it’s impossible to care about what Vanessa is uncovering or what’s eventually going to happen to her. As if Cognetti knows he’s tied himself to a boring character, he essentially pivots to a far more interesting pair (Seaara Sawka & Mike Sutton) in the final act as an investigator and a priest try to exorcise Carmichael Manor. These scenes feature Cognetti’s strongest direction, but he intercuts them with conversations between Vanessa and another character, which serve as speed bumps to the film’s pacing.
Ultimately, it feels like Cognetti has lost sight of what people loved about the first movie. “The haunted house that turns out to be dangerous” is a great pitch, and those creepy clowns that always move off-camera are genuinely chilling. (Having one move on camera like he’s Art from the “Terrifier” flicks feels like another betrayal of the strengths of the series.) Even the most loyal fans don’t care about Vanessa’s background. They want to imagine themselves stuck in a haunted house, slowly becoming aware that they may never leave. And if they can’t get out, they may just go crazy like a filmmaker who can’t escape his most popular vision.
