Found footage cult-horror hit Hell House LLC is getting a new installment courtesy of Shudder in 2023 with Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor.
2015’s Hell House, LLC, created by Stephen Cognetti, uses the found footage format to detail a group of haunted house developers who set up a haunt in the abandoned Abaddon Hotel, a project that eventually unravels in a tragic night and a number of deaths. The Abaddon's sinister history and the media’s struggle to piece together what happened there occupy an additional two sequels, Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel (2018) and Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire (2019). The original and sequels' straight-to-streaming releases have gained the horror franchise new momentum over the past several years with viewers, with many critics praising the original’s contributions to the found footage horror genre.
News of the prequel dropped during a recent premiere of the Lake of Fire on YouTube with an official announcement from Terror Films presenting the latest title in the franchise, Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor. “…a group of cold case investigators [who] stay at the Carmichael Manor, site of the grisly and unsolved murders of the Carmichael family back in the eighties," reads a description of the project. "After four nights, the group was never heard from again. What is discovered on their footage is even more disturbing than anything found on the Hell House tapes.”
The Carmichael Manor is just the first of many planned projects in what will be known as Hell House LLC Origins films. News of a prequel will no doubt generate excitement among fans of the original, which is often named in fan-favorite lists of recent found-footage horror. While the sequels have attracted less attention, both premiering on Shudder, the history of the Abbadon Hotel is fleshed out a bit more in each, offering new insight into the events of the original film.
The Hell House LLC prequel no doubt offers great opportunities to delve into a number of scenes that have yet to be explained fully in any of the sequels, while still offering up the sort of scenes that use the found footage format to its best advantage. Hell House LLC is often compared to the Paranormal Activity franchise in its nature and scope, but the film series offers much more in both its original mythology and use of camerawork, far surpassing many similar films from the past decade.
Hell House LLC: The Carmichael Manor will premiere exclusively on Shudder in the fall of 2023.
Source: Terror Films