Learn everything about what happened in Hell House LLC (2015).

With the fifth and allegedly final installment of the Hell House LLC franchise coming up, that will tie all previous four films together, it’s important to know exactly what happened in all those four films. I have watched all of them again, and I didn’t mind at all, because I love the franchise, especially because it’s found footage and with a mockumentary style, and I have made recaps for every film. 

So let’s begin with the first movie that started it all. 

The Main Characters:

• Alex Taylor: founder of Hell House LLC, a haunted house attraction that started in Queens, but now moved to Abaddon, where he found an abandoned hotel.
• Sara Havel: Alex’ girlfriend and part of the crew. 
• Mac/Andrew McNamara: Alex’ best friend since childhood and important crew member from the start.
• Tony Prescott: crew member who’s in charge of the electricity.
• Paul O’keefe: part of the crew and the one documenting everything they do to set up the haunted house attraction. 
• Diane Graves: is making a documentary about the incident at Hell House.
• Mitchell Cavanaugh: part of Diane’s crew and watches the Hell House footage.
• Jonathan: part of Diane’s crew and cameraman. 

The Setting

October 8 2009 at opening night of Hell House, an unexplained malfunction caused the death of 15 tour-goers and staff members. Now five years later Diane Graves is making a documentary about the incident. She interviews an author Robert Lyons, a photographer Martin Cliver, who broke into the hotel to take pictures and Miranda Kelly who was there at the time as a tour-goer. Diane has footage from tour-goers, but also footage that was made by the Hell House crew themselves. 

We see in a video a tour-goer took that night, that something happened in the basement and everybody started to panic and running back to the entrance. But we can’t see what started the chaos and nobody knows until what really happened. Until now.

Until Sara Havel contacts Diane and agrees to be interviewed at a hotel nearby the now abandoned Abaddon Hotel. Sara hasn’t been seen after the event until now. She tells Diane that strange things started to happen after they started sleeping at the Hotel. She also brought tapes with found footage of what happened from the day they got there right unto October 8. 

Continue reading below this announcement.

The Hell House Tapes

When they arrive at the Abaddon Hotel it’s totally fallen into disrepair. But there’s a lot of old stuff they can use as props. What immediately feels strange is the pentagram on the wall of the basement and all the bibles lying around. There’s also an old piano and Paul starts to play an eerie tune. 

They start to fix the electricity, patching things up and set the decor for the haunted house tour. Alex puts three clown mannequins in the basement and they hire three actors. Melissa is going to be the damsel in distress chained to the ceiling right in front of the pentagram in the basement and Joey puts on a clown suit to be scary and act as a bodyguard for Melissa and Sam is going to be the hostess at the entrance. 

But strange things are starting to happen when they start staying there overnight. The camera doesn’t work in the basement and the walkie talkies are acting weird as they hear strange voices coming trough. 

Melissa asks them if they heard the rumors about this place. She tells them that 30 years ago in 1989, the owner hanged himself. We later learn that the owner, Andrew Tully, bought the hotel just for the town’s name, that related to a gate to hell. He was allegedly a cult leader and an eleven-year-old girl and her mother disappeared one day from the hotel. After that Andrew hung himself. 

Paul is the one filming everything and when he talks to the camera lying in bed, a woman comes into his room. It’s too dark to see who it is, but she doesn’t answer Paul and he assumes that it’s Sara. 

They also hear a scream at night and think maybe it’s the soundboard. 

Daytime isn’t less scary. Paul sees the clown mannequin with the bleeding eyes standing on top of the basement stairs. When he turns the camera away and back again the clown isn’t staring into the basement but right at Paul. It has turned its head. Paul runs away and comes to the conclusion that everybody is accounted for and nobody is in the clown suit. When he wants to show them the clown, it is back in the basement where it is supposed to be. 

But that’s not the only inexplicable movement the clown makes. In the middle of the night he stands at the middle of the stairs. While Paul is totally shocked, Tony picks it up to put it back in the basement, but then they find a sleepwalking Sara staring at the wall and mumbling in a foreign language. Tony puts down the clown and they help Sara get out of her trance. But when Tony wants to grab the clown again, it’s gone. Now it’s standing in the dining room in front of the grandfather’s clock that starts to chime.

In the hallway where they put a stroboscopic light they see four freaks standing there in stead of three when they are testing the lights. 

Sara is also found in the garden staring at a statue of a woman, unresponsive. It seems that Sara and Paul are affected the most. Alex pretends nothing is going on and he’s for the most part in the background, which is strange on its own. Mac is the most skeptical, while Tony is beginning to question if it’s safe. All the more when in the middle of the night Paul disappears. 

Paul is lying in bed talking to the camera again and suddenly a women is sitting against the wall. He quickly hides under the covers but the woman is coming closer and closer. Until she is right next to him. The camera scrambles and Paul is gone.

They go looking for him in the morning and when they call his cell phone they hear a high pitched sound. They also hear the eerie piano tune Paul was playing, but there’s nobody at the piano but mannequin Hector, as named by Paul. Tony is now filming and he and Mac go looking for him in the basement. There Tony sees the heads of the clowns turn towards him. Then they find a catatonic Paul sitting against the wall. They help him upstairs into bed. 

Tony is so scared he wants out. But then Mac tells him something, that forces him to stay. Nobody else but Alex and Mac and now Tony know about it. We don’t even know what Mac told Tony and what the big secret is. We only know that’s it is something that Alex did. So Tony stays. 

Opening night October 8 2009

Now we get to see the footage that Mac filmed as a crew member but also the footage a tour-goer shot. 

Tony and Alex are in the control room looking at the camera footage if everything is going according to plan. Suddenly they see Joey running up the basement stairs. They send Sara to check it out. She thinks she sees Paul walking about.

The footage from the tour-goer shows a cloaked figure appearing in the basement. That’s when Joey takes off and leaves Melissa by herself chained up. More cloaked figures show up and gather around Melissa. That’s when the panic breaks out and everybody starts to run upstairs. Mac guides most of them out.

Meanwhile the firetrucks have arrived and now it’s a big chaotic scene. Mac is running through the hotel after Tony towards the basement. They pass a creepy young woman (probably the same Paul saw) standing in front of the grandfather’s clock in the dining room. Tony gets to the basement first and the door closes on Mac, while we just get a glimpse of Tony getting attacked by a cloaked figure. Mac now runs upstairs with Sara. When they come up to the attic they see Alex hanging from a noose, chocking. Then suddenly the attic is crowded with cloaked figures. Mac and Sara are heard screaming and the footage scrambles. 

We learn that Joey never talked about what happened and that nine days later he had hung himself in his bedroom. 

Back to the Abaddon Hotel

Diane asks how Sara made it out. Sara tells Diane she just walked downstairs and outside. She also tells her that she must take a look in the Hotel for herself. While Jonathan the cameraman is reluctant, Mitchell who stays behind to watch the last piece of footage thinks Diane should go. 

Sara tells them she wants to take a break and that she is staying in room 2C. But the hotel desk clerk tells Diane they don’t have a room 2C.

Diane and Jonathan arrive at the Abaddon and find the remnants of what happened. The props are all still there, even Hector  and they find blood prints on the walls of the stairs to the basement. But they don’t go in the basement. They go up and find room 2C…

Meanwhile Mitchell is watching the rest of the footage and makes a shocking discovery. We see someone walking with the camera and we see Paul standing in the hallway. The camera is put down and we see Sara hugging Paul. So it was Sara who was filming. 

Then Paul picks up the camera and starts stabbing Sara with something. When she lies dead on the floor she is dragged away by an unseen person. Then Paul slits his own throat and sinks to the floor.

Diane opens the door of room 2C and inside Sara is sitting on the bed. Suddenly cloaked figures appear and attack Diane and Jonathan as the footage scrambles and goes static. 

Somewhere the piano plays the same eerie tune. 

Conclusion

Key points to remember:

• Cloaked figures appeared in the basement and started to kill everybody.
• A ghostly young woman is haunting the hotel.
• A clown mannequin with bleeding eyes moves on its own through the hotel.
• An eerie piano tune is played on the piano.
• All the Hell House crew disappeared.
• And now Diane and Jonathan have gone missing as well.

Unanswered Questions:

• Where was Sara all that time? Is she still alive or a ghost?
• Who is the young woman who keeps showing up?
• Where do the clowns and specifically the clown with the bleeding eyes come from?
• Does the eerie piano tune have a meaning?
• Who are the cloaked figures and where did they come from?
• Does the grandfather’s clock have a significant meaning?
• What was Alex’ secret that only Mac knew about?

Read more about Hell House LLC:

• Hell House LLC: The Abaddon Hotel (2018) recap
• Hell House LLC: Lake of Fire (2019) recap
• Hell House Origins: The Carmichael Manor (2023) recap
• Hell House LLC (2015) review
• Hell House LLC: The Abaddon Hotel (2018) review
• Hell House LLC: Lake of Fire (2019) review