Jessica Fox, who runs an online documentary show, decides to put together a team to investigate the infamous Abaddon Hotel, and to hopefully unearth some tapes left in the basement which may or may not contained footage of original owner Andrew Tully and his cult’s activities. Along for the ride are a survivor from the first movie, who never wants to set foot in the hotel again – who gets convinced to do so in a nano second, and a psychic who wants to commune with the Hotel and what might be wandering its darkened hallways. As expected things don’t go well and another bloody episode is added to the Hotel’s history.

I guess the first movie, Hell House LLC, must have been successful as we get a second movie in the franchise. Pretty much we cover the same territory, but get some additional mythos, and a movie that seeks to take the terror out of the Hotel into the wider world. This is kind of pretty much a horror standard play, but at least this movie doesn’t lose itself in grandiose ideas that really don’t grab the viewer who pretty much wants more of the same that they grooved to in the original movie. Director Cognetti is carefully building a franchise here, at last count three movies, and isn’t going to descend into the general madness of conspiracy theories and Trump like delusions about what people want from their movie diet. It’s frightening to think Friday the 13th demonstrated how to get a franchise rocking, well before the New Line era at least, and Steve Cognetti is one of the few horror Directors that learnt the lessons being taught: and we’re now talking thirty odd years of horror franchise disasters here.

So what new material can the viewer expect during The Abaddon Hotel’s runtime. Well primarily we get a whole bunch of vignettes that either have the purpose of expanding on the Hotel’s mythos or simply to provide the viewer with some colour in an otherwise solely bleak outing. This isn’t a movie for readers who are easily depressed, there is no light at the end of this particular found footage tunnel. Anyways I was digging the stories within the plot and have to say they help the viewer to believe what they are watching. We get a number of teens breaking into the Hotel on dares, doesn’t end well, queue the found footage angle. But, and this is seriously excellent mythos building, we have former victims of what is going down in the Abaddon out and about recruiting new guests. There’s one real surprise in this direction, but hey spoilers dude, not going there, but let’s just say it caught me by surprise. To sum up there’s enough new material that fits into the overall franchise to keep viewers happy with what is going down. Before I forget, we also get a lot more of Andrew Tully, the character talked about in the first movie, but never shown.

Of course there is a lot of what we saw in the first movie on display. The narrow claustrophobic corridors are there, the clowns are back and still disgusting, and the tension can be cut with a knife. Anytime someone entered the Abaddon Hotel, the viewer expects the worse, and generally Stephen Cognetti delivers the worse without overburdening any scene with over dramatic special effects. So hold onto your knickers, Cognetti knows what upsets you, and by heck the Director isn’t holding back on using that. Hey this is horror the viewer should expect to not get off lightly while viewing.

There is one scene which is central to The Abaddon Hotel, the one involving a central character being forced to make a pretty hard choice, which I can’t really talk about because of the ever present spoiler issues. I just mention it here as it is definitely one to check out, and introduces the concept of “the lake of fire”, which I guess is just beyond the gates of Hell. This concept does explain one quick shot in the first movie, the one where it appears the floor has cracked and there might well be lava under there, which actually made no sense in the first movie, but which now has the viewer nodding their head in approval. So anyway look out for this scene, it’s brutal, forces decisions from characters, and really fleshes out the mythos.

Naturally there are a few problems with the movie, hence why there isn’t a perfect score going down. The acting, putting this nicely, isn’t overly convincing, the actual plot is pretty slim pickings and is being fleshed out by background scenes, and there’s a fundamental flaw in the logic. Ambassadors, for want of a better word, are being sent out to lure in more guests, uhmm what about Mr Tully – once again no spoilers here. You will know what I mean after watching the flick.

Overall Cognetti has some tension happening, we are all kind of waiting for the lead characters to make the Abaddon scene and the fallout from there, but the tension isn’t maintained throughout the movie. Whereas the first movie established the situation and started tightening the screws gradually as events unfold, the second movie lets the viewer off the hook to a certain degree, with continued scenes not involving the hotel littering the first half of the movie. I would also point out the lighting isn’t great in the current movie, at stages I really couldn’t see what was going down, which is generally a technique used to cover poor CGI, but in this case the use was inexplicable.

Naturally I have to mention our psychic for the evening, and you just know around here we think those people are fair dinkum and not running scams. Brock Davies, pretty well played by Kyle Ingleman, is over confident and is ready to further his reputation by going up against the Abaddon Hotel. Unfortunately for Brock, the Hotel and its occupants have other ideas and our resident Psychic isn’t up for the challenge he finds himself in. Sort of new age naivety versus Satanic reality. I was really entertained by this and could have seen even more of this aspect. Actually they could have made a whole movie around this, though I guess this has been done already, but nevertheless.  

Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel continues the overall story of Hell House LLC, further building the mythos, and bringing more cohesion to what we are watching. While the acting is definitely not on par with the first movie and below the general standard of your better found footage movie, the plot keeps the viewer interested. We get the same scares we have already experienced in the previous movie, scevil clowns, claustrophobic settings, actors in decent enough makeup to keep the viewer on edge, etc., but we also get an extension of those scares beyond the Hotel itself. Surprisingly this does not come across as some sort of added conspiracy, but is built as a logical extension to already established mythos. I’m definitely going to recommend the movie, with the proviso that you have already seen the first movie, this movie is the place to get your scare on.