Hell House LLC: Lineage, on Shudder

The Carmichael Manor is so notoriously haunted, even bottom-feeding reality TV crews stopped coming. Henceforth, no more found footage for the Hell House LLC franchise. Of course, they still have the evil clown mannequins. They also have a returning cast-member, but Vanessa Shepherd has been a mess since surviving the third movie. She’s not the only one. Frankly, nearly everyone in Rockland County lives in terror of the evil forces hopping from the Manor to the notorious Abaddon Hotel and back again in Stephen Cognetti’s Hell House LLC: Lineage, which premieres this Thursday on Shudder.

Evidently, back around the time Jason Voorhees drowned at Camp Crystal Lake, a car full of drunken guys slammed into a young girl as they were all leaving the Rockland County Fair. Since then, the hit-and-run dudes had prodigious offspring whom the uncanny mannequins have steadily murdered.

At least that seems to be the gist of it, according to Alicia Cavalini (a journalist, researcher, or something). She finally started to connect the dots between the carnival and all the horrors at the Carmichael and the Abaddon, but Shepherd can’t really deal with her revelations. She is too busy with her own nightmare visions and mourning friends, who are dying like flies. However, Cavalini convinces the reluctant Father David to perform an exorcism.

Father David is a man of faith, but he understands the dangers much more than Cavalini. In fact, he is probably the franchise’s most interesting character, thanks to Mike Sutton’s grounded, humanist portrayal. On the other hand, Elizabeth Vermilyea’s Shepherd is such a neurotic basket-case, you wonder why Cognetti spends so much time with her.

Even without the found footage format, there are several scenes with those evil killer clowns that are as unnerving as anything in the prior movies. However, Cognetti’s screenplay is weirdly unfocused and overly padded with detours to nowhere. Indeed, one hour and forty-eight minutes is indulgently excessive for a film like this.

Lineage is not nearly as consistently scary as Hell House LLC: Origins, nor does stand alone as easily. However, if you are a fan of the franchise, it has plenty of the stuff you want, like the clowns and the spooky Carmichael location. Overall, the results are just okay, but we’ve all seen a lot worse. Hell House LLC: Lineage starts streaming Thursday (10/30) on Shudder.