Hell House LLC is set up like a documentary where a crew is trying to figure out what happened at the opening night of a haunted attraction in New York state. There are talking heads and different sources of footage but most of the material comes from tapes provided by the lone survivor of the night from the group of five people who ran the house. The material goes a little into the history of the hotel they set up inside of and the media coverage from the night in question. Most of the running time is the group of five setting up the haunted house and sleeping in the abandoned hotel in the month leading up to the opening. They find the house with a basement full of pentagrams and Bibles, pre-cobwebbed and already spooky. Once they introduce you the bleeding clown mannequin that they are careful to remind you can't move on its own, you know bad stuff is about to go down.
In a way, this reminded me of the best bits of Ghostwatch where you glimpse something out of the corner of your eye. A figure moves in the shadows or something just appears where it shouldn't be. These things can be scary. There is a good scene that the Miller guy pointed out where a man wakes up to find a woman on his floor who is obviously dead until she turns her head towards him. He keeps hiding under the covers, afraid to see if she has gotten any closer. It really speaks to some primal fears I think we've all had. The Bleeding Clown alone is worth the price of admission. You can tell they thought out a mythology behind the hotel and it plays out in scary ways throughout.
There is a little coda that didn't need to be there where the documentary crew investigate the house. Otherwise, the movie stands up pretty well on its own. I think they botch the ending a little by having it go too long and show too much but overall, a pretty effective chiller.
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