I liked Hell House III a little better than Hell House II, if only because it didn't recycle the ending and they kept the villain monologue short.
It's obvious that Stephen Cognetti is very good at making creepy, tense, found footage scenes and I'm pretty sure that's all he's good at. In fact, he's very good at specific types of terror in found footage movies. It was brilliant in Hell House, but in II and III, we've seen it all before. It's still creepy and tense in this movie, but we've seen it twice now. We've seen the clown head turn, we've seen the ghost wander into the background, and everything else Hell House has to offer. All three of the movies play about the same.
Aside from that, this movie brings in a lot from the other movies. They go REALLY overboard in the first 30 or so minutes where it's just constant cuts to previous movies, it's a bit much. After that, they try to give the new characters life and you're just left feeling kind of eeeeeh. This movie didn't drag in the ending nearly as badly as Hell House II did, I at least wasn't counting down the minutes to the end, but this does almost nothing to expand the lore and the characters they introduce just aren't interesting. They try to give some of them some dimension, but it doesn't really work.
Then there's the ending. I was sure Wynn was the domino just reading the description of the movie and that Vanessa was going to be the dead girl that "escapes", I was half right and pleasantly surprised. Tully started monologuing as everything went to Hell and I groaned. Vanessa got killed and was like "there it is!" and then they did some weird Avengers time heist nonsense where Wynn somehow saved everyone and erased everything that happened that night. I don't know. I don't really get it. It leaves a lot of open questions about where the tapes came from and not really good questions. You're just left with a that made zero sense feeling. I guess it ends with Wynn and the original Hell House crew (I guess they couldn't get the Hell House II people) in the afterlife. There's some terrible dialogue and they get a drink.
I appreciate they closed the trilogy but it was just kind of a sad trombone sound of an ending.
And one final thing-- I know this movie probably did not have a large budget but. Oh. My. God. That final act massacre. I have not seen such bad acting and effects in a movie in a long time. I think this was supposed to be a crazy scary gore fest but I was laughing because it was just so bad. I don't know where they found the actors for the people that were being massacred and the demons, but put them back wherever they came from. Also, fire your CGI lake of guy because lawl.
Anyways, not a bad found footage movie, slightly better than the second, worse than the first.
It's obvious that Stephen Cognetti is very good at making creepy, tense, found footage scenes and I'm pretty sure that's all he's good at. In fact, he's very good at specific types of terror in found footage movies. It was brilliant in Hell House, but in II and III, we've seen it all before. It's still creepy and tense in this movie, but we've seen it twice now. We've seen the clown head turn, we've seen the ghost wander into the background, and everything else Hell House has to offer. All three of the movies play about the same.
Aside from that, this movie brings in a lot from the other movies. They go REALLY overboard in the first 30 or so minutes where it's just constant cuts to previous movies, it's a bit much. After that, they try to give the new characters life and you're just left feeling kind of eeeeeh. This movie didn't drag in the ending nearly as badly as Hell House II did, I at least wasn't counting down the minutes to the end, but this does almost nothing to expand the lore and the characters they introduce just aren't interesting. They try to give some of them some dimension, but it doesn't really work.
Then there's the ending. I was sure Wynn was the domino just reading the description of the movie and that Vanessa was going to be the dead girl that "escapes", I was half right and pleasantly surprised. Tully started monologuing as everything went to Hell and I groaned. Vanessa got killed and was like "there it is!" and then they did some weird Avengers time heist nonsense where Wynn somehow saved everyone and erased everything that happened that night. I don't know. I don't really get it. It leaves a lot of open questions about where the tapes came from and not really good questions. You're just left with a that made zero sense feeling. I guess it ends with Wynn and the original Hell House crew (I guess they couldn't get the Hell House II people) in the afterlife. There's some terrible dialogue and they get a drink.
I appreciate they closed the trilogy but it was just kind of a sad trombone sound of an ending.
And one final thing-- I know this movie probably did not have a large budget but. Oh. My. God. That final act massacre. I have not seen such bad acting and effects in a movie in a long time. I think this was supposed to be a crazy scary gore fest but I was laughing because it was just so bad. I don't know where they found the actors for the people that were being massacred and the demons, but put them back wherever they came from. Also, fire your CGI lake of guy because lawl.
Anyways, not a bad found footage movie, slightly better than the second, worse than the first.