Hell House LLC: Lineage
The air was understandably sombre at the Carmichael Manor in upstate New York in June 1989, the funeral of Margaret Carmichael, killed in a car crash, her sister Catherine visibly upset but her brother Patrick who was injured in the same collision more angry than grieving, refusing to say goodbye and believing that Margaret’s story was not over, that the tragedy would cast a shadow over the town of Abaddon and its people.
The Carmichael Manor later the Abaddon Hotel which became the site of the Hell House haunted house attraction, site of a tragedy which claimed over a dozen lives, the memory of the place has hung over Vanessa Shepherd since she stayed there; now managing a bar in the town and seeing a therapist about her recurring nightmares, a chance encounter with an acquaintance who reaches out for help starts the nightmare again when he is found dead.
The fifth in the sequence which began in 2015 with the found footage exploration of Hell House LLC, each of them written and directed by Stephen Cognetti, Lineage sees the return of Vanessa Shepherd (825 Forest Road’s Elizabeth Vermilyea), a character introduced in the third in the series, 2019’s Lake of Fire, now carrying the collective trauma of the town, the burden causing her to walk slowly and talk slowly but staying classy as she chugs vodka from her plastic keep cup.
With Victoria Andrunik, Cayla Berejikian and Gideon Berger resuming the roles of Margaret, Catherine and Patrick from The Carmichael Manor of 2023, largely in visions, Searra Sawka who played journalist Alice Harper in that same film is now Alicia Cavalini, putting together the history of the Carmichael family, joined by Mike Sutton as Father David whom she attempts to engage to perform an exorcism at the house hoping it will bring an end to things.
Set in the Hallowe’en season, porches decorated with pumpkins and harvest garlands and sinister clowns lurking on corners as well as in the flashbacks to the Rockland County Fair of 1993, beyond that there is little atmosphere, Hell House LLC: Lineage feeling like a box-ticking exercise, a panicked last chapter tying together the loose strands of a convoluted family saga rather than a coherent story, dreary rather than dreadful.
Alicia’s notes and Vanessa’s dream sequences filling in the blanks of who is related to who as long forgotten family connections and a previously overlooked relative are revealed while ghosts wander the halls of the Abaddon Hotel in bloody sheets and whisper secret truths, it is ironic that a film about death should be so lifeless, proceeding at a funereal pace as it drags itself forward, the lights of Hell House on but giving no reason to visit.
Hell House LLC: Lineage will be available on Shudder from Thursday 30th October
