Hell House LLC (2015)

Episode 130, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Craig: Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Craig.

Todd: And I’m Todd.

Craig: And once again, we kinda put off picking the movie Todd the last minute, and I suggested that we take a look at Hell House LLC from 2015. Now the reason that I went with this movie, well, there are a couple of reasons actually. I was recently on vacation with my mom and, we shared a hotel room, at night. She it was a working trip for her. It was a vacation for me, but it was a working trip for her. So she went to bed early every night. And so, you know, trying to be polite, I tried to be quiet, and so I was just watching movies, on my laptop. And I also, realized for the first time in, I don’t know, probably 5 years since my dad’s had Amazon Prime that I could access it. And so I was just, I did a quick Google search of, you know, what are some good horror movies available on Amazon Prime, and this movie was one that was recommended. And so I watched it and it wasn’t, you know, maybe a few days, a week after that that one of our loyal listeners and sometimes co host tagged both Todd and I in a post about this movie. People are talking about this movie saying that, it’s it’s maybe one of the scariest movies that some people have seen, one of the scariest movies on Amazon that’s available and people should check it out, and I enjoyed it, the first time that I watched it. Before I had googled, you know, what’s cool on Amazon, I had never heard of this movie before. Had you ever heard of it, Todd?

Todd: No. Not at all.

Craig: No. I I mean, it’s an independent film. It didn’t get a theatrical release. It did premiere at a couple of film festivals. I think that it debuted at the Telluride Horror Show, on October of 2015, and it played another festival where it won some award. I don’t know. Mostly it just debuted on VOD, and it’s available on several different, on demand platforms right now, and this is an independent film. It’s a found footage film, and I was thinking about it, you know, when I recommended it to Todd, I said, it is a found footage film. I know you’re not a huge fan, but give it a chance. And then I was thinking about it, and I was like, well, I feel kinda bad because Todd doesn’t really like fountain footage films. But it but it seems like most of the ones that we’ve reviewed, you’ve ended up enjoying.

Todd: It is the truth I’m gonna have to come clean, with, I’m afraid.

Craig: So was that the case here? I mean, I enjoyed it. What’d you think?

Todd: You know, I didn’t think this is a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. I thought it was okay. I can’t say I hated it. As a matter of fact, you know, one of my criticisms of found footage films is that a lot of them are kind of lackluster and don’t really do anything new. They rely too much sometimes on the just the novelty of the found footage as a way to make a cheap movie without really putting much attention into story and character and anything like that. And there are quite a few exceptions to that since the explosion of found footage films in the wake of Blair Witch, but, you know, I wasn’t even impressed with The Blair Witch Project when it came out. And I think I’ve said that before, that probably put a sour taste in my mouth for found footage films thereafter. But, no, this movie, I think, to be honest, I don’t think the characters were all that well developed. They they were all pretty flat, I thought, and that was maybe one of the beefs I had with it. But I’ll I will say that for a found footage movie, this one did a few interesting things. It’s not just here’s the footage we found from a camera all strung together. It’s actually almost, found footage within a documentary. And so it’s it’s more like a, a fake documentary movie, right, than it is a found footage film that then uses the footage that has been found as a part of their documentary, which comprises, I don’t know, 70% of the film. But the fact that, that it had this sort of documentary aspect to it kept the movie I don’t know. It just made it more interesting to me. I actually, was a little more engaged than I would have been had this just been, like, you know, 5 people ended up dying in a haunted house attraction in Pennsylvania, and only this camera footage was found. And then, boom, it just jumps into it, you know.

Craig: Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. I don’t really have a problem with found footage. I mean, just like with any other subgenre of horror, I think there are good ones and there are not good ones. You talk about Blair Witch. This one reminded me of Blair Witch, not in any way as far as the plot is concerned, but my experience with Blair Witch must have been different than yours because Blair Witch had this campaign where when it was initially released, they really went out of their way to make people believe that it was real. True. This was with that this was a true story and that this was actual real footage, like, they hid the actors away for over a year. You know, they they really made a point of making us believe that it was real, and I saw it very soon after it was released. I saw it in the theater with my partner, and we both believed that it was real.

Todd: Really?

Craig: And yeah. I guess it was that early before it had really kind of been exposed. And and I doubt that Blair Witch was the first ever found footage film, but it was kinda the first one that I remember being really mainstream And because I thought that it was real, it it scared me to death. Like, I thought it was so scary. But what reminds me of, what this movie reminds me of about that movie is that it’s a film that, in my opinion, can really create some very effective scares in very subtle and practically speaking, very simple ways. Like, you know, without, a great big huge budget, and without any crazy, special effects, it’s just got some really good scares in it and it it I was kind of effectively spooked out by it in places, and there were some really Todd, I hate to use the word jump scares because jump scares, it just sounds cheap to me, but there were several times throughout this movie where something would happen, where the camera would pan away from an image and then pan back to it, and something would have changed slightly or something was there that shouldn’t have been there, and it made me jump or it made me gasp, and and and it was it it it was spooky. I liked it.

Todd: I’m not gonna call you, naive or anything for believing in the Blair Witch thing. Even if you, kinda set aside, you know, the ultimate, in retrospect, ridiculousness that a company would put together a bunch of found footage and release it as entertainment, you know, something that terrible that happened to some people. Setting that aside, that first movie, you know, it really Arguably, it doesn’t really contain any supernatural elements. It’s all about the, the implied supernatural elements. These people are stumbling around in the woods. They get lost. They can’t find their way. There’s something kind of freaking them out but we’re not even sure what it is because, you know, we don’t really see anything. We see creepy imagery of like, you know, those those stick men figures kind of hanging in the trees that imply that there’s something, who knows, some cult, some whatever in in the woods that shouldn’t be there. And by the end of it okay, spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen it, you know, like, the creepiest thing is they run through this house, and one of them is, like, staring into a corner.

Craig: Mhmm.

Todd: And and and then the one carrying the camera’s presumably knocked out or hit or whatever. And it’s just sort of like the relationship of that to the mythos of The Blair Witch that we heard at the very beginning of the movie makes the whole thing creepy. But you’re not seeing people with white spooky eyes, you know, jumping out at the camera. You’re not seeing things that were there that weren’t there anymore. If I’m not mistaken, I I mean, it’s my memory is pretty hazy on it, but am I right about

Craig: that? No. You’re right. And that’s, you know, I I guess that’s what I’m saying kind of about this movie too. Like, the the effects that are are used are are very practical. And, like, in Blair Witch, okay, so they’re they’re in a tent, you know, being out in the woods in a tent can be spooky because you hear spooky things. Well, they hear all these unnatural noises and then all of a sudden, you know, there are these you know, something happens to their tent where it looks like their tent is under siege. Well, you know, from a filmmaker’s perspective, all that is is just some guys outside the tent, you know Shaking. Banging their right, shaking the tent. Yeah. But if if you allow yourself to immerse yourself in the mythos or whatever, It’s pretty spooky and and this one does the same thing. It does a lot with moving props around and it does a lot with, you know, just very brief glimpses of things.

Todd: Well, I think I think it’s so funny that you say this Todd. I some sometimes I think we’re of the same mind in a lot of ways. As I was watching this, I found the movie rather inspiring because as a filmmaker, I was thinking, my Todd, maybe it’s about time I went out and made a found footage horror movie. Yeah. Because I was thinking exactly the same thing. I was, like, these guys are doing so much with nothing. Yeah. They filmed it in an existing haunt house attraction, probably pulled together all the same props that were there. And they’re they’re really Yeah. Like you said, it’s just very simple scares With the exception of one thing, which clearly wasn’t special effects anyway. Everything is just something super creepy has been manipulated, or they’re hearing a sound, or or there’s a guy standing there that shouldn’t be standing there, you know, that kind of thing. It’s super simple to do. And Yeah. I watched it the whole time I’m thinking, my goodness, they’re running around with cheap video cameras. These actors are probably improvising half of their lines. And, you know, half of it is just, you know, the wandering around the claustrophobia of the house, them wandering around and getting lost, and just having these arguments and whatnot. I thought, my goodness, this movie must have cost like, you know, $25 to make. Yeah. You know, but it’s effective.

Craig: It I think so Todd. You know, originally, this movie wasn’t conceived as a found footage film. They were the writer and director who, wrote this conceived it as a traditional, you know, narrative film, not found footage, but, eventually it got switched over. And in doing the switch over, some things, were lost a little bit. And I I’m really proud of myself because You’re always proud

Todd: of yourself. What’s the reason this time frame?

Craig: I’m really proud of myself because I’m always really proud of myself. But this time, it was because, you know, after the movie, you know, I had seen it 2 times. I had a couple of lingering questions, and you know, I looked at my regular sources IMDB, Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes, these types of things and there’s just because it’s an independent film, there’s just not a whole lot of information there. No. But I was able to find this, Reddit thread where somebody claiming to be the writer director, and based on his insight, I believe it to be true, addressed a lot of the questions that I had, and we’ll get into some of that. But he said that he had a difficult time selling this movie to producers as a found footage film, but the way that he tried to sell it was, like Blair Witch as a Dateline NBC episode. Right.

Todd: That makes a lot of sense.

Craig: But but you’re right. They did. They filmed it in an existing, you know, haunted attraction, the Waldorf Hotel in Pennsylvania. And the owner ended up getting the credit for the set design because so much of it was just what already existed. The writer director, whose name is Steven, Cognetti, said that the and I agree, the the set itself really plays a lot into it because it’s this big hotel, and it’s really kind of like a maze. And I didn’t get that so much from the movie, but, apparently, you know, he said that every time that he went in to visit at preproduction, he had to have the owner kind of lead him around because he would find himself getting lost. And he when they filmed the, cast, coming into the setting for the first time, he made sure that it was their first time seeing it so that he would kind of get some of their real reactions. And I guess it was kind of easy to get disoriented in there. And and, you know, that kind of adds, to, I don’t know the mystique of the whole place, but it’s just kind of a cool place. The movie starts out, there’s a Craig at the beginning that says, what you’re about to see is a documentary on the mysterious events surrounding the 2009 Halloween haunted house tour tragedy. And then you get some scenes of these interviewing various people about this tragedy that happened at the Abedon Hotel. The Abedon Hotel, is a location, apparently just maybe 20 minutes or so outside of New York City. And the premise is that this company or excuse me, Hell House LLC, had been running a haunted attraction in New York City for a long time, but they’ve decided to kind of change things up and take it out into a more rural area for whatever reason, for effect or whatever. It’s cheaper, whatever the reasons may be. And they find this Todd abandoned hotel and we hear that on October 8, 2009, at the opening of this attraction, there were multiple deaths, nobody really knows what happened.

Clip: The hardest part was probably the silence. Everything was very hush-hush. There were gag orders put on everyone involved with the case. Cops, lawyers, even the families of the victims were left pretty much completely in the dark.

Craig: One of the people who’s being interviewed says all we really have is this YouTube video that one of the people who was attending this attraction, uploaded after it happened. And it’s, you know, kinda the typical stuff when they actually get in there. You know, it’s spooky. There’s flashing lights. There’s strobe lights. There’s lasers. There’s really quite good decorations. I mean, it looks like a a really good haunted house, but just some kind of off things start happening. Like, a guy in a clown suit, runs past the visitors as though he’s running out and the the visitors kind of look like that’s Todd, and and we see the employees scrambling as the visitors are going through. And then, as the person who’s filming the video gets to the basement, which is supposed to be the end excuse me, the end of the attraction, people are screaming and are are are trying to get out. Like, the people who are trying to get down there can’t get down there because the other people are trying to get out. And then all of a sudden, there’s chaos and there’s screaming, and then we cut to news footage police footage, which shows Todd being brought out and we hear the tape of a 911 call, which is very distorted, but it’s a female voice says that says something like there’s something garble garble garble, into the wall. Yeah. Then the interviewers interview this photographer who went in there apparently several years later, to take pictures because he wanted answers for what was going on, and we see that there is blood on the walls. There’s blood on the floor. You know, like tracks of blood looking like people have been pulled around on the the floor. He says the basement door had been blown off of its hinges, and when this photographer went to the basement he said, in a very kind of melodramatic way, but it didn’t really bother

Clip: me.

Craig: It’s like, yeah, I’ve I’ve seen some scary shit, but I wasn’t about to go down in that basement. But we see the pictures of what he you know, like, from the stairwell, what he took pictures of. There’s bloody handprints. It it you know, obviously, something very violent and bad went down there. And that’s the backstory that we get before we are introduced to our main cast who is this company. I think 5 of them. There’s Sarah, who’s the girl, the only one. Paul, who is, kind of the videographer. Alex, who is the head of the company. He’s in charge. Mac, who seems to be like Alex’s kinda right hand guy, and Todd, who is their electrician. But they’re headed to this new attraction, and eventually, they get there.

Todd: Now, I’m really glad that you got all the characters’ names straight and their relationships to each other because, to be honest, I wasn’t taking notes during this and I wish I had because I’m I’m still kind of unclear on all of their names and who was who. Like I said earlier, don’t think a lot of that makes a a big difference in the end. You know? No. Not really. Because they’re not really finely drawn. Even even as the movie goes on, their reactions and things and everything is I think it’s pretty flat, pretty stock. But Sara is the exception. Because the way that we get introduced to this footage, that they shot is that the documentarians were able to find Sarah who they said disappeared for a while after

Craig: Yeah. Like, 5 years.

Todd: After this happened. And suddenly, they’ve tracked her down. They don’t say how, but they’ve tracked her down, and they, she agrees to do an interview. And so she’s sitting at a table in front of the camera, and she just looks super distressed. And she’s kind of openly talking about a little bit what happened, but not telling them exactly what it was. And then she reaches down beside her and picks up a bag a sack and sets it on the table.

Clip: What is that? It’s everything. Everything that went on in the house was taped, mostly by Paul and Todd, some tour goers. How did you get these and off the police? I got to them first. Well, why did why didn’t you give them to the police? You’ll see.

Todd: The idea is then this documentary crew is the first group of people to get this footage that this this is this girl has been holding on to, for 5 years. And so, one of the cameramen comes around Todd the front, picks it up, and goes into the other room immediately, to start watching the footage while the interview with Sarah continues. Pretty much most of the movie from this point out is ostensibly the splicing together of this footage.

Craig: I I, honest to God, don’t mean to pick nits and I wouldn’t have said anything about this had I not found this Reddit thread where the director talked about it. But, the documentarians actually didn’t find her. That she contacted them, and that’s seeming that’s seemingly insignificant, but

Todd: It’s very significant.

Craig: Yeah. Based on, what the documentarian or excuse me, the the movie the filmmaker said about his intentions, it it becomes, significant.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But anyway, they they arrive at the hotel and it’s super spooky. They look around, you know, it’s it’s beaten down. It’s clearly abandoned. I mean, in in real life, this place would never have sat there, you know, unoccupied for this long, you know, and and everything still have been in there. You know? Like, at least somebody would have come in and cleared all the crap out. But for the purposes of the movie, you know, it’s it’s nice that it’s decrepit and rundown, and there are all these cool things in there. And and and that’s one of the things that they’re excited about because they say, we can save money on props and stuff because, you know, look around, it already looks spooky. And it does. But right away, you know, there’s just, you know, little seemingly insignificant things like there’s weird interference on their radios. And if you’re watching closely, and if you weren’t, Todd, I’m I won’t blame you because remember this is the second time I had seen this. So I was not only watching closely, but knowing that we were gonna be talking about it, like I was pausing all the time and rewinding and looking back at things because, you know, there’s just little tiny things, like, even in the very beginning, just as the camera is scanning around in one of these rooms where the light is coming from the windows because there’s no electricity, so it’s it’s semi dim light and everything’s kind of in shadow. But even very early on, if you watch closely and I feel like maybe even in this early part, maybe, the the camera actually like, it scanned past, and then it Todd, like, a freeze frame.

Todd: It did. Yeah.

Craig: You’re supposed to see something here.

Todd: Yeah. It was very obvious, Yeah. At that point.

Craig: Yeah. And there’s like there’s like a a creepy shadow, you know, in the vague shape of a person kind of hanging out in one corner. And they go down to the basement and like there’s numbers painted on the walls and there’s a pentagram painted on the basement wall. And part of me thought, get out.

Clip: Yeah. I know right.

Craig: Like this is not a good sign. But you know, in real life, if I were them, my first thought probably wouldn’t be yeah. It probably wouldn’t be, you know, this place is, you know, a hellmouth or something. It would be some kids came down here and spray painted a a pentagram on it.

Todd: Wall. Yep.

Craig: And they’re not particularly concerned about it. And there are creepy books, you know, laying around and Bibles laying around.

Todd: I like that Bible bit. That was kinda cool. Like, there’s pile of Bibles. I think it’s even at the foot of the pentagram or in front of one of the walls. And, like, one of the characters said it almost the instant I was thinking it. One character was like, oh, this is really creepy. Don’t you think this is creepy? And the other character said, it’s a frickin’ hotel. There’s a Bible in every room. Which is exactly what I was thinking.

Craig: Totally true. Totally true. When they first get there, it says, you know, it’s 46 days before the opening. And we know from the beginning that the opening is the the day of the big event. But once they get there, you know, they assess it and then it jumps to a week later where Tony, their electric guy, has gotten the electricity on, which I guess has been an issue. And they’ve got the place cleaned up a little bit and they’ve got, surveillance cameras set up, but dun dun dun, the surveillance cameras don’t work in the basement for some reason. Again, you know, it’s just little things. Here, the first part that I found especially spooky was Paul, the camera guy, turns on his camera like he’s going to do an in bed confessional. And he’s got the camera faced towards him and he’s facing away from the door and the door behind him is open just a little bit more than a crack, and the light coming in from the hallway is red light, like security light. And he’s talking to the camera not saying really anything of consequence, but then a woman we see a woman walking behind him And of course, because she’s backlit, we can’t there’s there are no distinctive features. She’s just a silhouette, But she walks in, and eventually he turns around and he sees her.

Todd: Sarah? What’s up, dude?

Clip: You cool?

Todd: Todd, you sleepwalking?

Craig: And she just turns around and walks out, and he just attributes it to sleepwalking. Again, if it were me, I probably would have jumped up out of bed to see what was going on.

Todd: Of course. Yeah.

Craig: Not totally unrealistic and seriously, I mean, it’s just one of these things. It’s so simple. It’s having somebody walk in backlit so they’re just a silhouette and they’re just standing there for a second and then they turn around and walk out. I thought it was so spooky.

Todd: Yeah. It was. And and I think it’s because it’s so simple and, you know, even some of the scariest parts in this movie, I think, happened in broad daylight which, you know, we’ve talked about before is really scary too. It reminded me a little bit of sinister A little bit. With a creepy figure that’s kind of in the background in different places. And all it is is doing is either standing there or like you said walking in and walking out. Very, very effective. Talking about found footage and talking about this movie and the kinds of things you find in found footage. One thing I’ve always said is there’s gotta be a reason for the found footage. And it’s gotta be a plausible one why they’re not putting the camera down, you know, when things get crazy. And the reason for this footage is that they’re trying to document the process of putting this house together. And I would say, to be honest, if I’m gonna nitpick just a little bit, I think it’s pretty implausible that they would document so freaking much, you know, like, him waking up and just recording his thoughts into the camera is just his personal thoughts.

Craig: Mhmm.

Todd: Just normal everyday discussions and dialogue and arguments and stuff that they’re having, you know, is recorded. Like, it’s important. I mean, I would think if you’re gonna if you’re tasked with recording the process of putting this house together, it’s kind of a business thing. Sure. They talk about putting it online, and you don’t wanna have to wade through 100 and 1000 of hours of footage, you know, at the end of the day when you edit it all together. You’re just gonna record the stuff of Yeah, You’re gonna record some of the initial walking around through the house. You’re gonna record some of the planning phase. You’re probably gonna record a lot of putting the things together. Right. Actually, there’s very little of that.

Craig: Yeah. That’s

Todd: true. It’s all this, you know. So, that was one thing that a little bit got to me, just because it’s always in the back of my mind. It didn’t pull me out of the movie but, you know, that’s one thing that kinda bothered me about about the movie just a little bit, the found footage aspect.

Craig: Well, the director said that that was something that he struggled with because he knows that that’s a critique that people have, like, why would they keep filming? Like, why wouldn’t they put the camera down? Now and generally, again, I feel like I’m just being a contrarian. I I I don’t wanna disagree with you just for the sake of disagreeing, and this is kind of off Todd, but I I honestly feel like and and you work with young people Todd, just kind of the culture of Todd. I feel like people are so obsessed with documenting every moment of their life.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And and I’m I’m just as guilty, you know. I was watching this movie when I was in DC and every day every day I would post hundreds of pictures of myself, you know, in DC. Nobody cares.

Clip: Yeah. I surely

Craig: didn’t. No. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Right. Right. Nobody cares, but, you know, like, I felt for whatever reason the necessity to document this. And so it Todd didn’t seem entirely unlikely to me, but

Todd: That’s a fair point.

Craig: I think that it’s well, and I think that your critique is a fair critique also. And again, you know, it’s a movie so Yeah.

Todd: There’s a fair amount of suspension of disbelief you have

Craig: to If they weren’t taping, we wouldn’t see anything and then it’d be super boring. The next thing that happens is that they hire actors And I guess that this is something that they do, you know, they hire local folks, you know, to be, their performers. And they hire, Joey, and he’s gonna play a clown down in the basement. And their whole reason for hiring him is because they want their main attraction to be a hot girl chained up to the wall in the basement. But especially since the surveillance isn’t working well in the basement, they want to have some muscle down there in case anybody gets gropey with her. So they hire this big guy, Joey, to be the clown And then there’s, this very, you know, she looks like a real person that you would meet on the street and hire Melissa, but she’s very beautiful and, she’s gonna be their hot girl. And another lady, Sam, who ends up kind of being the hostess of the event. And they arrive and then we cut back to the documentary and one of the interviewees says that the first cops on the scene said that the first body they found was a hell house staff member with a self inflicted, slit throat.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And and while all of this is playing, we see this, you know, found video footage of all of these guys, the the company and the actors, just being really chummy. And I I kind of liked that, you know. Yeah. That reminded me of the descent where, you know, amidst all the horror, they would sometimes, especially at the beginning and the end, show you pictures of them in their happy times.

Todd: Mhmm.

Craig: And and it kinda, you know, it builds sympathy for these characters. At one point, the camera zooms in on Joey, the actor, and it says that he survived. He was one of the only ones that survived. Now if you’re the first if you’re watching this for the first time, you probably wouldn’t put it together. I certainly didn’t, but in that YouTube footage, we saw a clown running out

Todd: Yep.

Craig: Very early on. Well, that was Joey. He ran out and they say that he survived, but that he refused to talk to the authorities and that 9 days later, he hung himself. So, again, just adding more to the mystery.

Todd: There’s a point in here where they’re talking with the actors and one of the one of the actors says, oh, something about the history of of the of the hotel. Yeah. And is it Who is the main

Craig: It’s Melissa.

Todd: What’s his name?

Craig: Oh, the main the main guy, Alex.

Todd: Alex, yeah. Alex says to her, you he’s kinda trying to change the subject and everybody’s like, what what are you talking about? What you didn’t tell us about this and then this story kind of comes out, that the person who ran the hotel, at some point, a girl and a woman disappeared, And he was maybe blamed for it, maybe not. But anyway, he ended up hanging himself, in the dining room. And then that’s what kind of closed the hotel. And that happened, like, back in the eighties sometimes. So it’s like 20 years ago that this hotel supposedly just been boarded up and nobody’s touched it.

Craig: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that you’re right. He does totally try to get away, from that subject. And but she says, you know, there have been all these rumors, things kept happening to guests, but she also says, you know, I don’t really know. It’s Yeah. It’s just town talk, you know, whatever. But we get this exposition from some of the people being interviewed from the documentary that the owner of the hotel was this guy named Andrew Tully, and he built the hotel there specifically because in some versions of the Todd testament, the name of the town Abaddon is the name of the demon who guards the gateway to hell. And there are these rumors that he, Tully, was the head of some sort of cult. You know, it’s all very vague. We don’t really get a lot of information, but, eventually, amidst all these rumors of people, you know, he was cleared of the disappearance disappearance of the woman and her daughter because, he provided documentation that they had checked out. Well, that would be super easy to fake. Yeah. But anyway, eventually, he hung himself there, and we see a police photo of his, suicide. And then, it cuts to 16 days before the opening and now they’ve got things mostly set up and they’ve got these clowns set up in the basement.

Todd: By the way, I had no idea, like, from the very beginning they started talking about their concept for this this scene that they were putting together. I had no idea, like, how this was supposed to work, because it’s it’s it’s 3 clowns set up in the basement across from a woman chained to the wall in front of a of a pentagram. Yeah. It’s like, what? Just because clowns are scary and the woman is hot and that’s what you want. You know what I mean?

Clip: Yes. I had I

Todd: was really trying to wrap my mind around this the what their storyline was for this particular room.

Craig: No. I think that’s it. Just clowns are scary and there’s a hot girl chained up. Like but in in fairness, these clowns that they have set up and and, like, they literally just have these dummies sat down against a wall.

Todd: Yeah. It’s also kind of lame.

Craig: Yeah. It it’s sort of lame except for the clowns are really scary. Like, I I know you we’ve talked about this. We’ve done the movie Clown. We’ve done the movie It. We’ve talked about clowns before. I find them scary. You think it’s kinda silly, but I thought that these clowns were pretty freaking scary. And they even make a point of saying that. Like, one of them in particular has, like, blood coming out of its eyes. It’s bald. It’s big and beefy. And It’s a really great mask and I just don’t think we should waste it on Todd dummy. It doesn’t move. Paul, what do you think? You wanna slap on this mask, sit down here all night, stare at Melissa? And they make a major point of saying that they’re disappointed that the dummies heads can’t even turn. All they can do is is stare straight forward, which is obviously a setup but whatever it

Todd: I guess their clown, Joey, was just gonna sit amongst them, or were they gonna put the mask? Okay. Yeah.

Craig: No. He was just gonna sit amongst them, which again Todd doesn’t make a lot of sense. If the mask is really that good, put it on Joey. But whatever. Paul has another bed shot where he hears a strange noise, but not much comes of that. Then there’s, you know, just it’s all as is the case in found footage. It just kinda jumps around a lot. There’s a funny scene where they’re talking to the actors and Joey, shows them that he can do this trick where he can pop his eyeball out. And that was did did you read anything about it? That was real. Like, the

Todd: Skype could actually

Craig: do that. And then the trivia, it says, but he recommends that others not try.

Todd: That’s how you that’s how you know all the trivia on this was written by the director.

Craig: Right. But it’s gross. Like Yeah. Yeah. If I if I was making a scary movie and I had

Todd: an actor that could pop their eyeball out Do it for the camera.

Craig: But the, the place is all set up. And then Paul is going around and he’s looking around and he just kind of showing how it’s all set up now, and he comes across Mac and Mac is reading a book and he’s like, where’s Tony? He’s like, I don’t know, he’s around here somewhere. So Paul keeps going around looking around and he comes around the corner and that especially spooky clown from the basement is standing at the top of the basement stairs. And it it spooks him, but he thinks it’s Tony playing a trick. So, he pans the camera down the stairs and when he pans it back, the clown is now looking at him. And he jumps and he’s like, woah. He’s like, oh, man. You got me, bro. Because he still thinks it’s Tony. But he turns around and walks around back to where Mac was, and now Tony is there with Mac. So Paul turns back around and runs back to where the clown was, but now it’s gone. And again, this is one of those instances where this was so easy to do. Yeah. And yet, I found it so creepy. And, like, you know, even in reading about it, like that the mannequin that they had for this clown, it wouldn’t stand up properly. So what did they do? They put one of the actors who wasn’t in the scene in the clown suit and the actor just stood there. It was the guy that played Alex. He just stood there, and then he turned his head. And then, you know, when the guy walked away, he went up back down into the basement. Super easy to do, but, oh my Todd. I just thought it was so effective. Am I wrong here?

Todd: No. You’re not wrong at all. And I would say what ups the ante considerably is the same sort of thing as, like, having the spooky stuff happened in the day. It’s it’s the fact that everybody’s in there. This is a house full of people, you know. This isn’t one guy creeping around at night, nobody else is around, and he comes across a scary thing. You know, he kinda walks in there, he’s casually videotaping everything, he video tapes this, he kinda talks to it, he walks back, there are 2 guys just you know, the room next door basically and they come back. The fact that this creepiness can happen right here and right there even amidst all of these people and all this activity going on in the house. I I don’t know. For me, it just kinda kept me on edge a little bit, thinking that at any moment in this movie, something creepy like this could be happening. And then how imminent is that danger to them? You know, Todd doesn’t matter whether you’re alone or not. You’re in trouble.

Craig: Mhmm. Yeah. And I don’t know. I mean, it’s a scary clown chasing you is scary. But, like, just these things that are supposed to be inanimate then you know having moved, spooked me out.

Todd: Well and the other thing is the fact that he’s got it on camera.

Craig: Yes. And I

Todd: think this is the only time that this at least that they talk about it. But immediately after this, everybody reviews this footage. Right. On the camera. And and that would get because that was the first thing going through my mind too was, well, he’s got it on the camera. Please tell me. They go back and look at it. And sure enough, they do, and they just accuse him of pulling a prank. Right. Maybe that is supposed to kind of write off that’s, like, the handy explanation for why there isn’t much reviewing of the camera afterwards. Because a lot of other stuff that goes down, obviously, all of it on camera because we see it, and there’s no real good explanation why they’re just not getting more and more freaked out by him continuing to come to them and say look, this other thing happened, Check out this other thing. I felt like that might have been a bit of a weak point of the movie.

Craig: Oh, yeah. If I had any complaints about it, that would be it. Like, they the fact that all of these things keep happening and they just kind of keep writing them off. Now, I think that, ultimately, I’m trying to save it because there’s a part where they, like, comes up. Yeah. Especially Alex just keeps trying trying to brush everything off. Like, it’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it. Right. But but, seriously, if it were me, no. I’m out. Like Yeah. Have fun, guys, if you wanna stay here and get killed, but I’m out.

Todd: You’re right. I mean, at some point, the the movie does I mean, and that bothered me too. At some point, the movie does delve into that ridiculous territory of all of this incredibly creepy and almost undeniable stuff is happening, yet they’re still gonna go to sleep and live in this house and put this attraction. I mean Yeah.

Craig: Oh, yes. I agree. And then just scary things continue to happen. There’s a really cool part where, Tony is, testing the lighting and the effects and Paul is filming and there’s a strobe effect and, like, he’s just shooting down this hallway and there are 3 dummies at the end of the hallway. Scary dummies. If I were in a haunted house, I’d find them scary. But, like, as the strobe keeps happening, one of them keeps appearing and disappearing, and they keep moving just slightly.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And it’s it’s freaky as shit. But again, it’s another one of those moments, like, bye, like I’ve got this on camera, but it’s also another moment that I appreciate because that’s just good editing, you know, like it it you’re an editor. I’m not, but I can only imagine that it would be easy to edit frame by frame strobe shots and just, you know, edit in the shots where he is there and then edit the shots where he’s not there, but it’s it’s really scary.

Todd: It was true to the way a strobe would appear on a camera too. It’s you’re not gonna see because the cameras have what’s called a rolling shutter, you know. I mean, the screen draws from top to bottom. So, if there’s a quick enough flash of light, one frame is only maybe gonna be, like, the bottom half of it is gonna be lit. Or the top half of it’s gonna be lit. Because the flash was too fast for it to record across the whole, you know, frame. And so they really used that to their advantage, I think, in that you see this flash, and you see this character up there, and you’re waiting for the next flash, and that second flash comes, but it’s only the bottom half of the screen. Right? And then that next flash comes, and then it’s the top half of the screen again, and and he’s not there. And then it flashes again, and he’s not there. And then it flashes again, but you only see the bottom of the screen. And, I mean, it’s like it’s toying with you a little bit. You know, it’s kind of teasing you. Like, you know, it wouldn’t look that way in person. In person, you would see everything in front of you in front, you know, with every flash. But on the video, it’s really building that suspense by playing with that that aspect of technology. It was actually quite brilliant editing, I thought.

Craig: Well, in on video, it it makes you kinda question yourself, like, what am I seeing? Like like, is it changing? Like, you like, you you you feel like you saw something there before, but it’s so quick you’re not sure, but then they show they show it enough times that you’re like, yeah, something’s messed up. That in

Todd: and of itself is pretty ballsy, you know. The fact that they stay they linger in the scene for so long and have this happen multiple times. But it it’s effective because you want it. You know you’re looking for that confirmation yourself and they’re doing it and it could be something you know that’s that’s the sort of thing where you know, like, say, sinister. You know, you see the creepy character once, it scares you. You’re not gonna linger on it, you know. You’re not gonna show it again and show it again and show it again. You know, you’re gonna wait before you show it again, you know, several minutes. Whereas in this scene, they’re breaking that rule, yet it’s just scarier each and every time because it’s get you’re getting for more and more confirmation and you’re also like, why the hell is this guy still in the hallway?

Craig: But I kinda believed it because I believed that he was questioning what he was saying. Like, this can’t be right. Yeah. He’s even asked

Todd: in the midst of it. He’s like, how many dummies do we have at the end of the holiday? Yeah.

Craig: There’s another creepy part where they wake up in the middle of the night and Paul finds that creepy clown at the bottom of the skit the the stairs that lead up to their bedrooms and that’s scary. And then Mal, who is always very excuse me, Mac, who is always very skeptical, starts to move it back. But then they find Sarah just, like, standing in front of a wall chanting, or or at least I at first, I thought she was chanting. As they got closer to her and they could hear her better, I think that they were just playing the audio backwards, but it sounded pretty cool. But she freaks out when they wake them up, and then they turn around to go back upstairs and the clown is gone, and then one of the the prop clock chimes, which it shouldn’t, and there are candles lit that shouldn’t be and then the clown reappears somewhere and they freak out and they all run upstairs. The next day, we see Alex comforting Sarah briefly and then it says it’s just 3 days until the opening. And Paul is doing another one of his bedtime confessionals and he turns on the camera and immediately and this is something that I like. Oh gosh, it’s like it usually they make you wait for a scare, but it’s like this scene just begins and he just clicks on the camera and he’s looking right into it and he’s totally oblivious, but we can see that there is a creepy effing demon girl sitting right behind him in the room.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And and, like, he just sits there and does his confessional for a while until eventually he turns around and sees her and he freaks out as one would and then he hides under his blanket and then he peeks back under the blanket and she’s still there and now she’s looking right at him and she’s got,

Todd: like, these

Craig: these white demon y eyes. And so he goes back under the blanket and, like, this sounds so childish and stupid, but, oh my god, it was freaking me out. I was, like, just stay under the sheet.

Clip: I know. Just don’t look.

Todd: That’s what they get you is what you look.

Craig: And he does. He looks out 2 or 3 times, and every time he looks out, she’s a little bit closer. And, eventually, he looks out, and she’s right there. And the camera glitches and we hear him screaming. And the next thing we see is Tony finding the camera the next morning, but there’s no Paul. But Mac and Alex just think that Paul has flaked and taken off. They try to call him, but all they get is like some weird creepy feedback. But then in the middle of the night that night, they hear the piano playing and they think that it’s Paul playing a joke on them. So, Mal and or excuse me, Mac and Tony go down to investigate, and they can’t find Paul anywhere, but they’re still hearing things and they get down to the basement and the camera sees those 3 creepy clowns and then it pans away them for a second and then it pans back and they have all turned their heads and are looking right at them. And and and it it, like and it freaks Tony out. And eventually, they just get well, they first of all, they find Paul sitting seemingly catatonic against a wall and they they pull him out and put him Todd bed or whatever. And then Todd is done. This is the moment where I’m like, finally, somebody has some brains. Like, he’s like, no. I’m out. This is crazy. We cannot open to this public this to the public. We have to shut it Todd. And Alex and Mac are like, no, we can’t.’ But Tony’s like, ‘F you. I quit. I’m leaving.’ But Mac follows him out and says, just listen to what I have to say. And then we don’t hear what the explanation is. The next thing that we see is Tony, like, sitting in a field saying, I can’t leave. And then Mac comes into frame and he’s like, I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you sooner. Now, this was the thing that I had a major question about because I couldn’t figure out why he would stay.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And that’s that’s what the the question that led me to this Reddit thread was. Why did they stay? The filmmaker said originally it was much more fleshed out because it wasn’t found footage and there was a lot more way to explain it. He said there are hints. He says the fact that they had to leave the city, the fact that they are renting this broke down place, the fact that they can no longer afford animatronics and they have to just use stationary props. Apparently, Alex had somehow lost all their money and this was their last grasp hope. Okay. Right. Like, that they were in dire straits and this was it. If this didn’t work out, it was done. What the filmmaker went on to say is, in thinking about the development of the movie, he believes that everything is connected. The fact that Alex lost all the money was not a coincidence. It was somehow manipulated by whatever entity or force is going into this hotel to draw them there and then to draw more people there.

Todd: Interesting. Now that

Craig: yeah. That’s very conceptual and, you know, like Yeah. Had they tried to expand upon it further, I don’t know that it necessarily would have played out. But it did bother me because I I couldn’t imagine what Mac had said off camera that would have gotten Tony to stay. Because you couldn’t have said anything to me that would have got me to stay. No.

Todd: Yeah. I I couldn’t figure. I thought it’s for some reason had something to do with Sarah because there’s the whole boyfriend girlfriend thing and I I don’t know. I thought there was something weird going on there. But yeah, you’re right. I thought I missed something. I thought that maybe I was supposed to know or figure it out.

Craig: And I like the explanation. I mean, I think that’s really cool mythology, but nobody’s, you know, unless you, you know, dive into the rabbit hole of Reddit. You’re not gonna find it, but there it is, folks.

Todd: Well, thanks for digging it out for us, Craig. And and and bless you for digging and diving into the rabbit hole of Reddit. This is a place Sometimes we’re just better off not going down. That’s true.

Craig: Oh, man. Okay. So then this all leads up, to the big shebang. Everybody’s on edge. Paul is still catatonic sleeping, you know, they can’t do anything with him. The actors are kinda nervous. Everybody’s kinda nervous, and they’ve got a great big crowd and they tie Melissa up in the basement like she’s chained to the wall. Joey is is down there in the clown suit just in case things get out of hand, But then, all of a sudden, the walkie talkie start malfunctioning. And then, we start to see things from various video perspectives. Mac is wearing a headcam. We also start seeing clips from the original YouTube video, and I don’t know, there are a couple of other ways that they give us various

Todd: Conveniently recovered footage from a previous, haunted house goer, which which I thought, well, how did this somehow suddenly get put in there? Yeah.

Craig: I don’t know. Just roll with it.

Todd: He didn’t upload his to to YouTube as

Craig: well. And and we start seeing what we saw in the beginning. But then we start to see it, you know, with context and we start to see it from a different perspective. We see Sarah running through the house as we saw her before. We didn’t know who she was. And she says that she sought she thought that she saw Paul walking around the house. And the last time we had seen him, he had been in bed. Then we see Joey run out of the basement and run away. Then we hear Melissa screaming from the basement, get me out of here. This isn’t part of the show. And then we see chaos everywhere and then, again, you have to be watching closely, and and I don’t think that I noticed all of this the first time, but there are in just brief glimpses of these fast moving camera takes, there are robed figures, there are demonic figures, Melissa, who was once where she was supposed to be, all of a sudden is gone. There are people running around, doors slamming and locking. We see the same ghost girl that Paul encountered before. The basement door slams and then seemingly the last ones together are Mac and Sarah and they run upstairs and they see Alex hanging in the attic and he’s still alive. So Mac runs and tries to help him, but he’s attacked by one of these demons or roamed figures and it’s all so fast Like, you really don’t get to see much and the camera falls and you hear Sara scream and then it cuts back to the documentary where they are interviewing Sarah.

Clip: I came down, came down the stairs from the attic, and when I got to the front door, the police were arriving. Happy to be alive. They didn’t ask me any questions or anything. They just rushed me out. Nothing happened to you from the attic all the way to the front door. You just left. Yeah.

Todd: And then she basically, says that she wants to leave or she’s tired. She wants to go. Sarah suggests well, has also suggested why don’t they go to the house? Mhmm. Have you been there? And they’re like, well, no. It’s boarded up and, you know, we don’t we try to get permits, but they failed. She’s like, well, you should go. You should go and see for yourself. At this point, this is kind of found footage from the documentary we’re getting into because they set the camera down as Sarah leaves. And as Sarah leaves, she said, I’ll see you, I’m in room 2 c. And they’re okay. So they set the thing down and there’s an argument between the cameraman and the and the woman, and they ended up deciding to go. And as they go go to leave, they swing by the hotel that they’re staying in where they had presumably had the interview, and tell the different desk clerks, hey. Tell the woman in room 2 c, that we’ll be back soon. And the woman says, well, our our rooms don’t have letters. And she’s like, oh, well, just tell Sarah so and so or whatever. And she looks on the computer and is like, there is no Sarah so and so checking in here. And then, she says, oh, well, he he she must have just checked in under a different name. That’s okay. Goodbye. And of course, we’re going, oh, crap. You know, you can see where this is going, like, you know, a mile away. So I liked that foreshadowing. And they do. They go back to the house and, they go around through it and they see all these sites. And I have say, like, I thought this was neat too. I mean, you could really get in the spirit of things with them because you’re reminded that all of this stuff that you have just been watching actually happened at least 5 years ago. Right? Right. And so they’re going through the house with the same glee that the previous people were going through to see, you know, kind of everything intact from the old hotel. They’re seeing this crime scene Todd, you know, everything’s still intact. Oh, look. There’s the blood smear. Oh, there’s the wall. Oh, you know, here’s the stuff from the video footage we saw, and here’s the stuff from the YouTube video. And, yeah, oh, here’s where the strobe light would have been and all this stuff. And and they decide not to go into the basement, but instead they go up to the attic.

Craig: Right. But but wait but wait. Before we see them go there, we get another scroll on the or or text on the screen that says, after they left, the guy who was reviewing the video footage saw something that he couldn’t explain. That’s right. It’s important because what he sees after they leave is Sarah runs downstairs, but she doesn’t get it outside. She runs into Paul who grabs the camera from her and bludgeons her with it and then we see, you know, she’s on the floor bleeding and gasping and we hear ominous footsteps and we see some unknown entity drag her away, and then we see Paul cut his well, we don’t see it, but we see the aftermath of it. Cut his own throat and Paul Todd the ground. So, we know that something messed up is going on, and I liked the, you know, it’s just a little gag. When we then cut back to them in the hotel, they’re looking around, Diane, the lady, her phone rings and she looks at it and she’s like, oh, it’s just so and so. I’ll call him back. Like Yeah. Girl, you shoulda answered that call. Yeah. Then anyway, alright. Continue.

Todd: And so she goes up the stairs, and as soon as they open the door, they’re faced with door 2 c. Mhmm. And she says, wait a minute. She said she would meet us in room 2 c. And, of course, the cameraman’s flipping out. He’s like, we are not going in there. She says, well, this is what we came here to do. And she goes up and unlocks. So there’s, like, a latch from the outside here of this door. So nobody could have gone into that room and relatched it from the outside. So she opens up the latch and they enters the room, and there with her back to us sitting on the bed is Sarah. And she’s like, Sarah, what are you doing here? Sarah, what’s going on? And, Sarah turns around.

Craig: She’s bloody as we had seen her after she had been bludgeoned. She’s all bloody and they freak out. And finally, the girl’s like, let’s get the f out of here. Yeah. Even though the cameraman has said that, like, 3 times before this. So they turn around to go, but the door slams and it’s locked and they can’t get out. And the camera just very quickly turns back, and Sarah is standing there. And, again, it’s just these black robed figures standing next to her and then the camera glitches and drops to the ground, and then it comes back on and the room is empty, as though nothing had happened. And then we just hear the piano playing again. And, you know, that’s something else the director talked about. What what he said was that this house is some sort of entity. He and and he kept saying that that guy, whoever owned it, I don’t remember what his name was, Tully, had thought that he was opening a doorway to hell, but the the director kept saying whatever he opened down there was trying to draw people in and and when the lady on the 911 college said there’s something in the wall- there’s something dragging people into the walls, That’s that’s what was going on. And, when we, you know, Sarah had been killed. We saw that. We saw her get dragged away. When the documentary people came back in, they saw the trail of blood went into the wall. Like it didn’t continue going down, but it went into the wall. And people were asking, well, you know, what happened to the camera guy Paul? You know, why did he come back? You know, why what was up with Sarah? Why was she back? And he said the they came back, but they weren’t themselves. They were either some possessed version of themselves or they were just some form of this entity that was there to draw other people in. That is why Sarah contacted the documentarians. They didn’t find her. Yeah. They didn’t find her. She found them and she brought them in. Paul came back, aided the house in bringing more people in and bringing the rest of them in. There was another Easter egg that I didn’t see at all, when those last documentarians were in there for the last minute. Apparently, at one point, if you watch closely enough, and I wasn’t because I didn’t see it, the camera scans one way and you see one of the horror house dummies in the corner and then it scans back and apparently the dummy has been replaced by Alex who is there watching them.

Todd: Wow.

Craig: Yeah, and I I didn’t see that. But and you know, it’s little things like that. This movie I I wouldn’t say that it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, but I really enjoyed it. And I would say that it’s definitely one of the better found footage movies that I’ve ever seen.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: It spooked me out. And I think, you know, the first time I watched it, I was I was in a hotel room with my mom. I was in a pretty safe space, but, you know, I was watching it in the dark. It was late at night and these The things that they did with their scares, I found really effective. I thought it was really effectively spooky and creepy and scary. I would recommend this movie to people, you know, anybody who’s looking for a good horror movie to watch. I would say check this out. It’s it’s a good one.

Todd: I I completely agree. And I was watching it. I don’t I I normally try to set the mood. So I know you’re always just in your computer in between classes, you know, grading papers while you watch these things. But, anyway, I, you know, try to dim the lights. Usually, there’s nobody in, and so, you know, I’m trying to get the full effect, and, you know, so often it’s just, you know, we’ve we’re so numb to this stuff now that, you know, we just have to kind of objectively look at these things when we talk about how scary they are. But I was I was literally sitting in my living room with this laptop in my lap, and my son running around playing, and my wife, bless her heart, was trying to distract him so I could finish the movie. And, I was still, like, getting freaking chills, and there were couple moments that just, like, really jolted me, and that rarely happens anymore.

Craig: Mhmm.

Todd: And and there was there was also a key moment where there was a jump scare, and he dropped one of his toys at the exact same moment. And I almost sprung off of the sofa. That was how into it. And that was toward the end of the movie. I mean, that’s how into it I was. You know, like I said, it’s not a perfect movie. I think you filling in the gaps here really deepened my appreciation for it, for sure. Without that, there were just some things that I just had major questions about. And, again, you know, we talked about how so much of it’s a lot of it’s kind of implausible, the fact that they even stay in there at all. But, but but the at the end of the day, there’s some really really effectively scary scenes in here that really take you by surprise, and that’s rare. You know, it’s rare for us to experience.

Craig: Yeah. And the supposedly, there’s a sequel in the works which I kinda think is a bad idea. Like, this is one of those it’s like, you know, just here well enough alone. But, you know, I could be surprised. So, more power to you whatever. Again, and and thanks to Jordan for pointing it out. Even though I’d already seen it, I still appreciate that. She tags us and stuff all the time and I appreciate

Clip: that. Yeah.

Craig: Check it out, folks. If you haven’t seen well, if you haven’t seen it, you pretty much seen it now. Yeah. We we kinda spoiled the

Todd: whole thing for you, I’m afraid. And then, if you like this movie or this movie sounds interesting to you and, you want a movie that we haven’t spoiled yet, check out The Innkeepers. Yeah. Because it is, it’s not

Craig: Have we not done that one yet?

Todd: No, we haven’t. No.

Craig: Oh, man.

Todd: I really, really dig that film. So, oh, maybe we should do it, yeah, soon. Because it it this this is in a similar vein, or a similar subject matter anyway. Slightly different take, but I thought just as effective as far as the subtlety, of the scares.

Craig: Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for listening to another episode of 2 guys in the chainsaw. If you liked this episode, let us know. If you have any further insight that we missed, we would love to hear it. And if you would like to hear any of our previous episodes, you can find us everywhere, Stitcher, Google Play, iTunes. We will be back around probably next week with another movie, and until then, I am Craig And I’m Todd. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.