One of these changes is that I have a fantastic career on a graveyard shift...somewhere. I'm really hesitant to break out details because I don't trust anyone with any information about where I am and what I'm doing. Super sorry. But I basically don't do shit all night and it affords me time to devote to doing what I love to do best: watching horror movies. I've watched some greats (The Devil's Candy, which is now on Netflix--please watch it, its very refreshing) and I've watched some just okays (We Are Still Here, which came highly recommended but it didn't do much for me).
I have JUST finished watching Hell House LLC. It also came highly recommended (guess which subreddit I frequent). Having finished the film all the way through, I have some concerns. That's right, you won't hear me soap box about life's ills but it is extremely important to voice my opinion on horror films in the hope that perhaps they will change.
Hell House LLC is a well made film for the most part. The found footage is found footage-y--actually the film serves as a found footage/mockumentary hybrid. You know what kind of camera work you will get for these movies, so I won't comment on that. It was decently acted, the suspense was properly managed throughout most of the film...but the story and some of the scares just disappointed me more than anything.
Well, what do I like from found footage movies? I guess one word I would use to sum up my feelings is "plausibility", but to go more in depth, maybe its best that I do a comparison review and compare Hell House LLC with a film I think may be the best mockumentary/found footage movie I've ever seen--Lake Mungo.
Lake Mungo is also a home footage/mockumentary hybrid. It is extremely well acted, surprisingly heart felt, extremely creepy and ridiculously depressing. In short, it's a roller coaster ride of a film in how it plays the viewers emotions. But let's get back to Hell House LLC so I can properly highlight what works in Lake Mungo that doesn't work in the former film.
Hell House LLC is about a company (the titular Hell House LLC.) who run a haunted house walk through attraction every year. They go around the country and set themselves up in well known locations and come Halloween time they scare the pants off people by jumping out at them and throwing blood everywhere.
I was very intrigued by this concept because walk-through scary experiences are a ripe setting for a horror movie and yet I haven't seen anyone do the concept any justice--including Hell House LLC. So what is the problem, then? It's not the characters, who act like I would expect they would act in this situation. It's not the story, which is vague--that's not a criticism. I like that the film makers didn't spell out everything for the viewer. They introduced issues between the leads that they never spelled out in any detail and I was fine with that because if this found footage were real, we wouldn't have characters who have a story arc--we'd have a snapshot of something horrible and we don't have any idea what the bigger picture would be. This aspect of Hell House LLC is highly commendable. Like The Blair Witch Project, there seems to be a lot of ideas that aren't elaborated on and go nowhere, and the mystery of it all contributes to the unease that the viewer is supposed to leave the experience feeling.
Lake Mungo's central mystery is much the same--what is "found" on the found footage is cleverly used as the climactic event of the film, where the viewer simultaneously learns what is going on and then gets really confused about what is going on and why it happened. There is "footage" sprinkled throughout the film and the more you see, the deeper you go into a puzzle and when the answer is flung into your face, you're still left wondering "why?"
But where Hell House LLC fails is where most other found footage movies fail--including the Blair Witch Project sequel that came out last year:
Things just get way too explicit. The mystery of the movie is revealed in the climax, but unlike Lake Mungo where that image will haunt you for the rest of your life after you see it, Hell House LLC just disappoints you because it spells too much out.
There's something creepy about watching a video that is sold to you as something real, and what you see is never very explicit. It's grainy, its hard to tell what is going on, you're not sure where to look to see what you're supposed to see--and then you see something. And your heart skips a beat. It's freaky, because its subtle. You see the split second as the camera turns and there is a mysterious shape or a face that quickly flashes by. It's subtlety makes it more likely to be real somehow.
Hell House LLC spells out all of its scares, to the point where I was wondering if all along it was going to be a set up. It wasn't. Things are so in your face in this movie that I had a hard time buying into what I was seeing, and with a found footage movie selling this story to your audience is the most important thing you can do. Its a found footage movie's job to trick the audience into thinking what they are seeing is real. It's not just having someone hold a camera and you put shit in the cameras view.
With Lake Mungo, everything is so subtle that sometimes you actually have to rewind the film to see what the hell people are talking about. That kind of interactivity actually goes a long way with getting your audience into the film. Once you get them actively watching, then they are engaged. Some people may like the more explicit kind of scare, but in my opinion that isn't what a found footage movie should be about.
When you're dealing with the supernatural in a film, make it subtle. Make it not pop out. Make people look for it. It's a good way to get them involved in your story, and its a great way to put in a nice, deep scare for when their eyes are searching for the story.
Now, there were moments of subtlety in Hell House LLC and I will give them credit--however, those moments of subtlety are immediately trampled upon by the film going back immediately and showing you explicitly what was supposed to be hidden. It's a cop out.
To be fair, Lake Mungo does this too, but with how that movie is written, how it moves--it's a lot more organic. Those moments of review when they give you a second chance to see the creepy things serve the story in a very real, plausible way. A lot of the pay off of Lake Mungo happens during its CREDITS--AFTER the film has already run its course. And boy, what a creepy pay off it is. I will never be able to scrub its imagery out of my head.
Hell House LLC, sadly, suffers from a lot of what other found footage movies suffer from. Making a movie is a difficult task, I'm sure, but found footage movies are constantly breaking the rules of plausibility, and I think that that affects how effective they can be with their story telling. Jump scares are fine if you build them up well enough.
But like Randy in Scream, there need to at least be some ground rules you should establish when you get out there to make a found footage movie.
1. If there is something supernatural going on, don't make it explicit. Subtlety is key. How often do you as an audience member hear about how a person experienced something so drastic like a person entering a haunted house and jumping through weird time loops, while at the same time dodging moving furniture and getting chased by a very visual in your face demon? No one, right?
2. If you're dealing with a human threat, you can break a few more rules, because human evils love to break rules. Subtlety is nice at first, but if the problem is an evil stalker, those things do realistically tend to escalate.
3. Keep your audience in the dark as much as possible, no matter the threat. Let the mystery of the events haunt them for the rest of their lives. No conveniences to conjure up scary imagery. The more you let your footage speak for itself, the better--and that means not giving the audience any sort of in your face idea of what is going on. The Blair Witch Project gave us several different nuggets of "backstory" but those ideas never really came back for pay off in any really big way (save for one strange detail).
4. Steadicam is for losers. Make people sick. No one in their right mind is going to keep a camera so ridiculously steady when they are running from a perceived danger. Hell, no one may even keep a camera around when there is danger. The footage of that poor gentleman lost in the catacombs of Paris is a good, (maybe) real life example.
Actually, that's a perfect example of how to do a good found footage film overall. That dude in the catacombs got so scared he said "fuck this" to his camera and ran off into the dark, never to be seen again. What was he running from? Did he ever get out? Those questions tend to stay with you long after you see that video. They haunt you. They engage you long after you're done watching.
To an extent, the ending of Hell House LLC leaves you in the dark about what actually happened, but its what the viewer sees that is the big problem. When you can clearly see what is endangering your players, it gets more and more implausible as long as your dealing with a supernatural threat.
Your found footage film's final moments are the pay off to the rest of your film. Don't fuck it up and ruin the immersion. That's dumb. Think of Ghostwatch. It's so effective because its haunt is barely noticeable throughout the film, and only on playback can you find all of its appearances. That's creepy. It makes you feel unsafe. It violates that rule of safety that you think you have in the real world, because now you're going to be looking around wondering what you're missing.
Lake Mungo's final moments are the summation of the sad mystery behind a girl's death, and though the revelation resolves everything that came before it, it still leaves the viewer haunted and wondering why. It helps that what you see is almost indiscernible, because it makes you look closer to see the details. That is plausibility.
To make a long story short (a summary introduction that my dear father loves to use frequently, and so I take a page from his vernacular) Lake Mungo works by having everything Hell House LLC has, but uses those elements to greater effect by virtually hiding them from the audience, like dangling a carrot above their heads. Hell House LLC ruins its build up by trying to make its hauntings flashy and intense. And that ruins the movie for good.
In the future, I hope found footage movies can move from fantastical, immersion ruining experiences and back into more unsure territory.
Lake Mungo gets a hard A+ for me, but Hell House LLC. recieves a C. It had some fantastic build up at times, but its payoff drags the rest of the film down into its haunted basement.
I'm sorry that got a little ramble-y, but when my brain vomits out shit I have to write it down, and I want to remain pretty unfiltered and unedited. Once again, if that's not your bag, my bad.
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