Premise: A group of reporters investigate the continued incidents occurring at the Abaddon Hotel.
Horror sequels are hard. A single horror movie is a closed circle. We're all familiar with campfire stories. They can work as fables or folklore. When the stories end on an ellipsis, the implication is that the continuation of the story could happen to you. "They never found him" means that you could find him. It's not as scary if I'm telling someone a scary story around the campfire and end it with "and next week I'll tell you about that time the psycho killer they never found who roams in these woods killed another group of campers". When someone make a sequel to a horror movie, that means there's a mythology now. It's no longer a random act. The mysterious stranger is part of a coven of witches. The man following you with the pick axe is a soul with unfinished business. Someone must complete the satanic ritual. All that explaining takes away from the scares. Because, you see, horror movies aren't real. As unlikely as it is that the crazed clown can go on a neighborhood killing spree all night, it's even more unlikely that he comes back and does it five more times.
I think Hell House LLC is as close to a perfect horror movie as I've seen in a long time. Great mystery. Excellent use of the found footage style. The actors are all very natural. There's just enough explanation about where the footage came from for it to feel plausible. The ending doesn't really explain that much. It hints at more while giving all the important details now. Coming back to this story for a sequel was going to be a letdown. They'd feel the need to deepen the mythology and make the investigation even more high profile. As expected, The Abaddon Hotel does just that. This time, the story is framed around a fake morning news program and a wannabe Vice reporting group. The story of what happened in the first movie continues to intrigue people and the authorities are still tight-lipped about what is going on there. In terms of new scares and all that, the movie doesn't offer that much. We already know the basic landscape of the hotel. While being abandoned is scary in its own way, it was going to be hard to match the creepiness of when it was set up as a functioning haunted house.
Really, the thing hurting The Abaddon Hotel is that found footage effectiveness is inversely proportional to how professional the footage looks. It's a lot easier to fake backyard footage than morning talk shows, paranormal detective shows, or Vice investigations. It's the uncanny valley of found footage. The more legitimate they make the source of the footage, the less believable it is. In fact, the best moments in this movie are some of the urban explorer YouTube videos they play throughout.
Also, I don't know how else to say it. The quality of the acting just wasn't where it needed to be. That ties back to the quality of the footage argument. It's a lot easier to make amateur actors believable when it's just a couple unsuspecting people playing around with a camera. The Abaddon Hotel has an extra layer of glossiness that exposes the performances more. So, while I think Jillian Geurts give a good performance in the movie, it always felt like an actress playing a character.
I'm being way too harsh on this movie because of how much I liked the first movie. The Abaddon Hotel still has a solid number of scares. Even just mining the material from the first movie yields a lot of results. They certainly find a lot to do with those mannequins in clown costumes. I am curious about the mythology they are building up. I wish they would've slow played it a little more. It took Paranormal Activity about 4 movies before they really overexplained things. The hotel itself is a wonderful location. All those thin hallways kept me on edge throughout. There's a third Hell House LLC movie out there I now want to see, because all they have to do is pull back a little bit to keep up the scares.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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