Studio:   Shudder
Director: Stephen Cognetti
Writer:   Stephen Cognetti
Producer: Joe Bandelli
Stars:    Bridget Rose Perrotta, Destiny Brown, James Liddell, Gideon Berger, Cayla Berejikian, Victoria Andrunik, Darin F. Earl II, Searra Sawka, Michael Caprioli, Thomas J. Cipriano

Review Score:

Summary:

An investigation into a reportedly haunted mansion where brutal murders took place uncovers a startling connection to the infamous Abaddon Hotel.

Synopsis:

Through separate interviews, Bradley Moynahan and Alicia Cavalini, respectively the co-founder of armchair detective website Net Sleuths and the true crime writer of "Buried Secrets," recount a brief history of the reportedly haunted Carmichael Manor, a remote mansion in New York that belonged to a wealthy family. Tragedy first struck on June 18th, 1989, when a car accident killed Margaret Carmichael and left her 20-year-old brother Patrick unable to use his arm. On October 10th of that same year, 17-year-old Catherine Carmichael and her mother Eleanor were brutally murdered in the mansion. Patrick mysteriously vanished in the aftermath while his father Arthur, who also disappeared, was presumed to have killed his family.

Following decades of rumors regarding what really happened, Margot Bentley, the other co-founder of Net Sleuths, convinces her girlfriend Rebecca Vickers to join her for a five-day investigation of the supposedly haunted manor. Upon arriving, the two women go on a quick tour with the property's caretaker, Donald, who mentions that a local antique store acquired items from the infamous Abaddon Hotel.

After Donald leaves them on their own, Margot and Rebecca find several eerie clown mannequins and items from a carnival game in Patrick's former bedroom. The discovery unsettles Margot, who was nearly abducted at a fair when she was a child.

Margot's brother Chase arrives to assist with the investigation. Chase, who has a history of erratic behavior, expresses his suspicion that Margot only invited him because their mother told Margot she was concerned he was having another mental breakdown.

After a first night where they are awoken by the apparent sound of someone singing, Rebecca decides to change her bed sheets due to a strange odor. Unbeknownst to Rebecca, her video camera captures the image of a bloody woman lying on the mattress.

Margot and Rebecca go into town to examine the Abaddon Hotel items at the antique store. Rebecca recognizes a grandfather clock with a secret compartment. Inside the compartment, Margot and Rebecca recover a cross necklace, film canister, and stack of notes that they secretly swipe from the store.

Left alone in the mansion, Chase encounters a ghostly young woman in a mask hiding at the end of a hallway. Film footage recovered from the antique store later shows Margaret Carmichael in that same mask pranking her aspiring filmmaker sister Catherine on the same day when Margaret would later die.

On their second night in the manor, Margot, Rebecca, and Chase are startled by a carnival game ball inexplicably appearing on the floor. Chase takes the cross necklace brought back from the antique store. Margot reads through several cryptic messages and poems found among the stack of papers.

In the morning, Rebecca has a Zoom call with Linda, her boss at the real estate agency where she works her new day job. While showing photos of various properties, Rebecca becomes perplexed by random appearances of images from the Abaddon Hotel and Carmichael Manor. Rebecca is outright frightened by a sudden series of strange pictures depicting a mutilated ghost in the same room with her. The experience sparks an argument between Rebecca, who now worries about her job after screaming in front of Linda, and Margot about leaving the investigation early.

Margot spends the third night going through more antique store items. Margot finds a photo of two clowns with the carnival game found upstairs on a Polaroid marked as being from a 1975 fair in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Rebecca idly mentions there are actually three clown costumes upstairs. Margot identifies the photo as direct proof of a connection between the Abaddon Hotel and Carmichael Manor.

Over the mansion's old servant communication system, Patrick's room rings the kitchen. Confused, Margot and Chase investigate and find one of the clown mannequins in Patrick's bedroom. They also encounter a second mannequin in a closet after another carnival game ball rolls toward them on the floor.

Chase finally confesses to Margot that what actually happened to him recently was he repeatedly had visions of a ghostly little girl who eventually warned, "Please don't go with Margot" the day before Margot called about joining her at Carmichael Manor. Chase and Margot agree to leave with Rebecca the next day.

When they wake up in the morning, Margot and Rebecca discover Chase is inexplicably missing. Chase's final video recording shows him being seemingly attacked by one of the clowns.

Film footage from September 4th, 1989, shows Catherine Carmichael entering her brother's room to find a despondent Patrick with the clown mannequins as well as their sister Margaret's bloody dress from the car accident. Patrick cryptically mutters about a way to bring Margaret back. Catherine gives her brother the cross necklace for protection. Once Patrick leaves his room, Catherine goes through a trunk where she finds strange sheet music among other items he was asked to put into storage by the people he works for.

Additional interviews with Bradley Moynahan and Alicia Cavalini connect Patrick Carmichael to Andrew Tully, the cult leader who built the Abaddon Hotel. While fleeing an arrest warrant, Tully met Thomas Rollins and Freddy Perkins, two men who ran a "Down-a-Clown" gaming stand at the fair in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Bradley theorizes Tully's cult started at that fair, since Rollins and Perkins would ultimately join Tully in building the hotel in New York where Patrick Carmichael ended up working. Bradley also notes that only Rollins and Perkins ran their gaming booth, making the third clown's identity a mystery.

Margot and Rebecca try to leave Carmichael Manor only to discover their car won't start. Deciding to escape through the woods on foot instead, the women encounter headless scarecrows, strange shrieking, and robed cultists who frighten them into fleeing back to the mansion.

Film footage from October 10th, 1989, the same day Catherine and Eleanor Carmichael were murdered, shows Catherine confronting Patrick Carmichael about the mass suicide at the Abaddon Hotel where he worked. Patrick cryptically claims no one died, but merely "crossed over." Before the footage abruptly cuts out, Catherine has terrifying encounters with a robed cultist as well as her sister's bloody ghost in a mask.

During their fourth night in the mansion, Rebecca frantically calls the police while Chase's voice draws out Margot from hiding in her bedroom. Eleanor Carmichael's ghoulish ghost appears in the bed and attacks Rebecca. Margot finds her brother's mutilated body with its eyes torn out before being attacked by a clown.

A final photograph reveals Margot's traumatizing fairground experience as a child occurred at a carnival where the third clown, who later appeared at the Abaddon Hotel, can be seen in the background. The remaining Carmichael film footage then shows an apologetic Patrick in that same costume saying, "I had no choice, we all serve him in different ways" while a man groans painfully off camera.

Review:

The first three "Hell House LLC" movies seemingly took the franchise's fiction as far as it could conceivably go. For one thing, the fictional Abaddon Hotel where those films took place definitively burned to the ground. For another thing, there are only so many times you can make the same location the site of repeated paranormal investigations or immersive Halloween haunts before even the most devout fan asks, "This again?" and that number is apparently three.

"Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor" sneaks around this creative conundrum by doing what the original Amityville timeline also did with its fourth film: Swap addresses. When you think about it, that's a bold strategy for a horror series inextricably tied to a specific place, a place that's even included in their respective titles, no less. That's like a Connecticut haunting inexplicably occurring in Georgia. Yet, just as "Amityville: The Evil Escapes" moved from Long Island to California via haunted floor lamp, "Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor" serves as both a sequel and a prequel by tenuously connecting the notorious Abaddon Hotel to a remote mansion where macabre murders once took place.

The basic backstory behind the titular mansion echoes an average episode of "Unsolved Mysteries." Back in 1989, tragedy first struck the wealthy Carmichael family when a fatal car accident maimed 20-year-old son Patrick and killed his sister Margaret. Just a few months later, mother Eleanor and other sister Catherine were found brutally murdered in their beds. Patrick strangely vanished, and his father Arthur did too, leading many to conclude Arthur pulled a Ronald DeFeo by savagely executing his entire family. Ever since, the Carmichael estate has been rumored to be haunted.

I'm always amazed at how such a sensational story can go relatively unrecognized by major media outlets for so long. I guess NBC's "Dateline" wasn't interested. Neither were any of the umpteen true crime shows with their own dedicated channels on Pluto TV. That leaves it up to armchair detective Margot, her girlfriend Rebecca, and her brother who doesn't know the difference between "sleuth" and "sloth" to investigate on their own thanks to unprecedented mansion access where no one appears worried about three amateurs having an unsupervised run of the sprawling property for five days.

Under Margot's directive to "record everything," the trio sets out for a familiar "found footage" adventure that's heavy on the familiar but light on the adventure. "Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor" follows a few "found footage" trappings whose usefulness is questionable in the third decade of the 21st century. The first of these involves separating events with "Night (Number)" interstitials. Announcing each evening makes little narrative sense since, until the final night, most of the mystery unfolds during daylight hours. "Night Two's" main event is just a red ball sitting still on a hallway floor, accompanied by a brooding audio sting. Ignoring the fact that "The Changeling" already made a red ball as scary as it could possibly be, the little squishy orb returns to roll at the siblings on "Night Three," although movement doesn't make its second appearance any more thrilling.

I can't imagine why "Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor" chooses to call out each night any more than I can divine the unknown motivations behind odd character behavior and pedestrian plot points. In one scene, Margot's brother Chase faces repeated disturbances from phantom knocks on his bedroom door. There are only two occupied rooms in this massive mansion. Why does his door need to be closed in the first place? I sighed even louder when Margot and Rebecca attempt to escape only to discover their car suddenly won't start. As if that trope wasn't exhausting enough, the women's Plan B takes them into creepy woods on foot with night about to fall. What could possibly go wrong?

As it rolls along, at a gradual pace I might add, "Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor" eventually ties the mansion murders to the Abaddon Hotel cult's mass suicide in a way that might intrigue some while others might see the links as an unnecessary stretch capable of snapping Plastic Man's arm. I don't recall if he actually appeared onscreen or not, IMDb doesn't list the character, but my summary for "Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel" (review here) reminds me Patrick Carmichael was at least mentioned in that movie as the cult's supposedly sole survivor. Based on the rest of those notes, my hunch is that "The Carmichael Manor" fudges a few previously established details to make various pieces fit. As long as you're not a stickler about continuity, these new additions to the "Hell House LLC" mythology look like they could open up further possibilities for a franchise that's been backed into a corner by a restrictive concept that's already been pushed to its "found footage" limits.

The "Hell House LLC" franchise doesn't separate audiences into the two extremes of "love it" or "hate it." From the passionate fans who fawn over the first film to casual viewers like myself, it's more like "love it" or "it's fine." Benefitting from the experience of doing this four times now, writer/director Stephen Cognetti and returning producer Joe Bandelli have probably crafted the tightest, most polished "Hell House LLC" film yet, and if you're someone who has always been creeped out by their signature clowns, they'll still be frightening here. But with "found footage" essentially handicapped from delivering any new surprises in this day and age, "Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor" still feels like only an "it's fine" entry to me.

Review Score: 50