Working in a truly terrifying haunted house would probably be a bit taxing on the psyche. If you've ever worked in a bar or retail establishment that plays the same music over and over, you know that feeling of laying your head on the pillow only to "hear" the sounds of the day in your mind. It's like going from water to land. You can still feel the movement on dry land. It seems that Stephen Cognetti, a talented writer-director, has become so obsessed with his vision that he's hearing songs we can't hear.
The director of the increasingly popular cult classic "Hell House LLC," and three sequels of varying quality (along with a foray into non-hellish narratives with the depressing "825 Forest Road"), Cognetti returns to the Abaddon Hotel, the Carmichael Mansion, and the world of "Hell House" with the stated intention of bringing it to a close in "Hell House LLC: Lineage." Forgive the skepticism of someone who lived through "Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter," but this is unlikely to be the final word on this franchise, which deserves a better ending.
Director: Stephen Cognetti
Writer: Stephen Cognetti
Stars: Elizabeth Vermilyea, Searra Sawka, Mike Sutton
One of the biggest flaws in "Lineage" is that Cognetti abandons his greatest strength as a filmmaker: found footage. In the original, he has a knack for imbuing seemingly ordinary images of people setting up a haunted house with creeping terror. Without the inherent closeness of the lo-fi structure, his shortcomings as a visual filmmaker are accentuated, as is his inability to maintain the pacing of a horror film. This one drags on through the story of "Hell House" in a way that's only interesting to even the most die-hard fans of the franchise, and even they will likely be bored.
Frustratingly, it still displays glimpses of visual safety, often with classic horror tricks, such as something moving out of frame that the protagonist can't see, or a flashing light that obscures the vision of both the hero and the viewer. But even the visuals that work lack the sense of danger generated by the best "Hell House" films, and the overstuffed plot thwarts any attempt to engage with what's happening or to lose oneself in the horror.
As the final film in the series, one might expect "Lineage" to close the loop from the previous installments. But Cognetti breaks new ground by delving even deeper into the history of his franchise, making the other films less mysterious in the process. There's nothing less terrifying than over-explanation, but that's the goal here, as Vanessa Shepherd (Elizabeth Vermilyea) tries to figure out why she's still tormented by the black-eyed clowns of the Abaddon Hotel. Cognetti sets out to connect Vanessa's lineage to the events of Abaddon and Carmichael's legacy through long expositional scenes about the events of the previous films. To say you need to have seen them recently is an understatement. This one needs an explanation like David Lynch's "Dune."
The truth is, all the dense plotting and overstuffed dialogue wouldn't matter if "Bloodline" were more consistently terrifying. It's one of those films that confuses grimness with horror. Vermilyea plays Vanessa with such flat, emotionless affect that she often comes across as drowsy rather than traumatized. It's more a failing of the script than the actress's, but it's impossible to care about what Vanessa is discovering or what will ultimately happen to her.
As if Cognetti knows he's tied himself to a boring character, he essentially pivots to a much more interesting pairing (Seaara Sawka and Mike Sutton) in the final act, when an investigator and a priest attempt to exorcise the Carmichael Mansion. These scenes feature Cognetti's strongest direction, but he intersperses them with conversations between Vanessa and another character, which act as brakes on the film's pacing.
In the end, it feels as though Cognetti has lost sight of what people loved about the first film. "The haunted house that turns out to be dangerous" is a great idea, and those creepy clowns always moving off-camera are truly chilling. (That one moves on camera as if he were Art, from the "Terrifier" films, seems like another betrayal of the series' strengths.) Even the most loyal fans don't care about Vanessa's past. They want to imagine themselves trapped in a haunted house, slowly realizing that they may never get out. And if they can't get out, they may simply go crazy like a filmmaker who can't escape his most popular vision.
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