Alligator X (2010) (USA)

aka Jurassic Predator: Xtinction/Predator X

⭐️⭐️

The Louisiana swamps are already a dangerous area. They get even more dangerous when an ancient predator calls the environment home. Laura LeCrois is about to come into contact with this monster after she returns home, searching for her missing father, Pappy. Lochlyn Munro is the small town sheriff already concerned with the growing number of missing people in the area (he can add two of his men to those numbers before we even get to the credits) and his royal sweetness Mark Sheppard is a scientist and disgraced professor who is looking to get his hands on Pappy’s land and is Laura’s ex husband. He’s been buying up plenty of property for shady reasons and with Pappy owing money to the bank and currently nowhere to be found, he’s figuring now’s the time to stake his claim. The sheriff fills Laura in on how Charles (said scientist) was banned from teaching because of his dangerous attempts to play God with extinct creatures. Hmmmmmmm. Love is in the air and egos are a problem… oh, and a whole lotta folks are gonna be chewed up by the silly looking apex predator. There’s also some scuzzy bumpkins who are up to something with the monster, use humans as live bait, enjoy sexual assault and, of course, they get their hands on Laura while she’s giving an ill-fated boat tour (along with the cute blonde some soldier was planning to propose to). The main dope (Ricky Wayne) overacts to a hilarious degree and looks like a cracked-out Taika Waititi. The sheriff goes looking for the gal he loves and the professor is also out there maybe for the monster and in cahoots with the two backwoods yahoos. Either way, I’m just happy Mark Sheppard is on my screen for a good chunk of the time. Crappy cgi SyFy monster shenanigans are completely saved by two leads I love seeing in my crappy cgi SyFy monster shenanigans. If they had been on screen at every moment, it probably wouldn’t drag as much ass as it does but it ain’t a complete waste of time and some of the performances are great for all the wrong reasons.

Fake Documentary Q: Cursed Video (2021) (Japan)

⭐️⭐️ 

The first episode of the Fake Documentary Q series is presented as archival footage of a television program that involved a small crew investigating strange things upon the request of their viewers. This leads the team to getting a tape that will supposedly kill you when you watch it. They track down the video store where the tape was supposedly available and ask the clerk if he knows anything about the cursed tape. Just flat out ask him. The clerk isn’t able to help (he does ask if they mean The Ring which I probably laughed way harder at than I should have) but contacts the store manager for them when they let him know they work for a broadcasting company. The manager advises the rumors are true and he then goes through packed boxes of crap looking for it. Having worked at a non-chain video store in my younger days, I can attest to the storage nightmare that was old and broken tapes. The most unbelievable moment in this short thing is when the manager is able to find the damn thing within thirty minutes. With creepy-ass tape now in hand, they go about checking it out. Ignoring the helpful handwritten message on the box by the owner… who then throws it on anyways. Its low budget origins has them snickering but when the movie cuts to brief bits of over-dubbed weirdness, there’s a change in attitude. The manager admits it was a publicity thing and it should just be dismissed as a prank that started up as a creepy rumor amongst teenagers. The team do that and figure it’s properly debunked. Well, our narrator lets us know that misfortune soon followed and the producer decided it was best to shelf the recordings. Luckily for us thrill-seeking weirdos, we get to see if the curse holds true because they present the footage that supposedly leads to an untimely death. Under twenty minutes and carrying a minimal eerie vibe with it, it’s an okay introduction to the aim of the series. It feels like it carried the threat of having a nasty bite but when it finally struck, there were no teeth.

Hell House LLC: Lineage (2025) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Making the shift from found footage to regular old cinema, Lineage takes a risk right from the get-go. I can see a sea of pissed off horror fans (well known for being a completely reasonable and forgiving lot) foaming at the mouth because of the abandonment of the series groundwork. I understand it and I think it worked in my favor that I had that sudden drop of first-person presentation spoiled for me. Now, the series up to now has had its issues but redeemed itself (which doesn’t feel correct to say because it never really shat the bed) with the last entry. Here, we follow Vanessa Sheppard suffering from nightmares and morbid visions years after a near-death experience (surviving the third entry which I was sure was the actual finale of the series) who now resides in the town of Abaddon. She would like to find her way out of the town where so much pain festers like a cancer but for some reason, Abaddon has a mysterious hold on her. She is gonna need to unravel that mystery as soon as she can because the people around her are beginning to die and it all has to do with her connection to the infamous Abaddon Hotel and the equally infamous Carmichael Manor. She teams up with a woman digging into the events of the last outing which of course has opened up a whole hornets nest of misfortune and supernatural spookiness. Creator Stephen Cognetti has claimed this will be his last outing in the series and manages to tie up a few loose threads but he has expressed his hope that someone else may pick up the ball which sets us up for a completely unsatisfying ending. Maybe he’s just outright lying, I hope that’s the case because if not he gave a big ol’ middle finger to his franchise fans and not in the insanely fun Jason X way. It’s a shame because he builds an intriguing story behind how the evil within Abaddon and its starting point has poisoned so many along with some memorable bits of terror. Just ignore a therapist who really shouldn’t hold a license to practice because I can’t fathom anyone with any training in the field spitting in the face of confidentiality like this to other patients and dialogue that doesn’t sound like it should exist outside of novel by some blowhard with a background in theatrics.

Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor (2023) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

You just can’t keep a good series down, even if the law of diminishing returns had begun to rear its ugly head on that prior entry. The unsolved murders of the Carmichael family back in 1989 draws a group of cold case investigators to the huge home and, after four nights, some bad shit happens to amateur sleuths Margot and Rebecca. If you’ve seen any of these flicks before, you know that their footage is found and viewed. The manor is a town over from the Abaddon Hotel and mention of an antique store which recovered some items from the building is touched upon. They also remark that the youngest daughter had dreams of being a filmmaker and recorded home footage before she was slaughtered in her bed. We get a nice bit of creepy history involving the murders, with the experts explaining the case and the spooky shit that went on following the homicides. The team behind these Hell House flicks always know how to establish one hell of a mood. In a locked room, a couple familiar clown mannequins are discovered by the two women. Margot’s little brother, Chase, arrives to help them out and the investigation is underway. Margot has an incident in her past where she almost fell into the clutches of a dangerous man at a carnival which explains where her fascination with crime came from, Rebecca has started a new grown-up job and may be on the way out of the cold case game and Chase has some troubles in his life which is why his sister invited him out to help. We see the ghosts before they do, showing up in the background of shots being all dead and spooky. A grandfather clock from The Abaddon is discovered at the antique shop and secret compartments are found within. Those compartments are filled with juicy material which the two gals eagerly scoop up and abscond with. There’s film footage from the youngest Carmichael in there among a bunch of cryptic notes and the mystery deepens. Giggling, moving objects, phantom footsteps, shadows where they shouldn’t be and full-bodied entities get everyone excited… and terrified. Chase urges caution and starts pushing to leave, Rebecca is weighing the terror of the shit that’s going down but is juggling that with her love for Margot and Margot seems further inspired by the chaotic horrors slowly boiling over which tie into her encounter all them years ago at the carnival. Gasp! Shit falls apart because of course it does. It may not reach the heights of the original but it’s definitely got more going for it than the sequels (which I still found entertaining).

Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire (2019) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Final chapter (at least I hope so) in the Hell House LLC series takes place 9 years after the original and finds the infamous Abaddon Hotel about to be reopened by eccentric billionaire Russell Wynn as the setting for his interactive production Insomnia. He invites the new host of Morning Mysteries (the previous host was a victim of the cursed place) to film an exclusive behind the scenes documentary. As usual things go to hell and the evil presence emerges... but it may all be part of Wynn’s plan. I mentioned earlier that I’m hopeful to this being the final act of the series but that’s not because I’ve had an issue (outside of the over-explaining the sequel did, although it now feels more than necessary) with the series but because it pretty much wraps everything up neatly. It gets a little corny towards the end but with how the story progressed it seems a bit unavoidable. I’ll have to go back and take the series as a whole but it’s a fitting finale to a trilogy that never hit the terrifying heights of its initial release.

Hell House LLC: The Abaddon Hotel (2018) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

As you can tell, I was a fan of 2015's Hell House LLC. So I carried with me my regular wariness for any sequel to something I enjoyed, yet I couldn't help but feel a bit of excitement. The sequel successfully pulls off the mockumentary/found footage amalgamation again but kind of gives away too much and comes off less terrifying than its predecessor. Eight years have passed since the tragedy at the Abaddon Hotel (which was the meat of Hell House LLC) and another documentary is being pieced together. Mitchell Cavanaugh, the sole member of the original documentary's team, is being interviewed for Morning Mysteries along with a psychic investigator and an Abaddon town official who is behind a lawsuit attempting to remove Mitchell's Hell House film from the market. A journalist, Jessica Fox, from a Vice-like internet news outlet is watching and wants to use Mitchell to help her navigate the inside of the nefarious building. She has gathered suppressed information and proof which points her to the original owner's satanic practices and the town's coverup. Jennifer manages to convince Mitchell to join her and her team for a quick trip inside in hopes that he can get some answers to what happened during the filming of his documentary from two years ago. This plan ends up being a disastrous one. The addition of various videos documenting ghostly encounters and “last known footage” of various missing people keep the macabre weirdness in the forefront during the buildup. The creepiness hits pretty damn fast once the journalist and her team enter the house and it drops the subtleness of the prior installment right from the get-go. It makes for more fun (which the wonderful spook house designs enhance) but loses the dread-filled weirdness mastered by the original. Which is fine but not exactly what I was hoping for (that's on me and I'm sure further viewings will prove to be far more enjoyable). Outside of the nitpick with how much is shown, I will say that I was not a fan of its ending. It works to explain quite a bit but I felt that wasn't needed. It completely kills the suspension of disbelief one needs when viewing found footage horror. It just hits as a bit too cinematic for my tastes (again, that's on me and you may have no problem with it.) Hell House LLC II is still a good movie and offers a few good scares. Sadly, it exists in the shadow of its superior original.

Hell House LLC (2015) (USA)

 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Excellent found footage/mockumentary hybrid injects some life into the unfairly maligned subgenre. Five years ago the Hell House company set up shop in the small town of Abaddon after a run in New York. Utilizing a long-abandoned hotel with a satanic past, the team get ready to scare the hell out of their customers. Filming the preparation, they manage to catch an escalating haunting and the mental stress it brings along with it. On opening night things go bad and fifteen lives are lost. Now a documentary crew is making a film on the subject and when the lone survivor of the Hell House team shows up, the filmmakers jump at the chance for an interview. The survivor gives them all the footage from inside the Abaddon Hotel and we watch as the filmmakers discover just how fucked up things got. Some genuine chills and a wonderfully creepy setting make for a fun watch. The cast is solid and the editing is near perfect.