- Directed by Stephen Cognetti
- Written by Stephen Cognetti
- Stars Gore Abrams, Alice Bahlke, Danny Bellini
- Run Time: 2 Hours, 9 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIYyWAXF5bA
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was quite a good found-footage film. We sort of learn at the beginning what happens at the end, and things fill in as we go back and watch things unfold. The cast seemed very natural, and the authentic setting was great.
Synopsis
We are told: “What you are about to see is a documentary on the mysterious events surrounding the 2009 Halloween haunted house tragedy.”
The Abaddon Hotel was one of those haunted house attractions, but a bunch of people died there. We watch a video taken by one of the attendees on opening night. It’s a pretty standard haunted house, with evil clowns, scary mannequins, spiders, and lots of screaming sound effects. Suddenly, there’s a bunch of people in the basement screaming to go back out the way they came; there’s a stampede and loud noises followed by lots more screaming, for real this time. By the time some people get out, the ambulances and police are already arriving. Later, they wheel out nine bodies. The 911 call is played for us, but that doesn’t say very much.
The police clam up about what actually happened, and no one would say anything at all. No answers were forthcoming, so a photographer broke in later and investigated further.
Sara Havel was a member of the group that did the haunted house. She says the city keeping everything quiet was the right thing to do. She hands over a big bag of videotapes from the security cameras that she never gave to the police.
We watch what’s on her tapes: Sara, Paul, Alex, Tony, and Mac arrive at the abandoned Abaddon hotel, where they plan to open the new haunted house before Halloween. The place still has most of the original furnishings, but it’s pretty beat-up and filthy. They find a bunch of Bibles in the basement. Once they got the electricity restored, the group started spending the night there.
We see multiple scenes of the guys setting up haunted house props, but most of them also have a dark figure moving around in the background.
Joey, Melissa, and Sam, three actors, arrive to play clowns and such. We cut back to the photographer that says Joey made it out alive but was found dead nine days after the incident. Someone else was found with a self-inflicted throat cut. Melissa lives in the area, and she knows stories about the old hotel that say it’s really haunted.
Experts say it all began with Andrew Tully and the missing guests in 1989. He built the hotel because of the name of the town. “Abaddon” is the name of the demon who guards the gate to Hell. Some guests went mysteriously missing, so Andrew hanged himself in the dining room.
Paul gets scared by a clown dummy that shouldn’t have someone in it but it moves anyway. When he shows the others the footage, they think it’s a trick. Later, he’s scared by having one too many creatures in the basement. Sara starts sleepwalking, and some of the guys are ready to pack it in and quit, but Alex, the leader, is more gung-ho than ever.
Paul sees something in his room and vanishes afterward. They find him in the basement in a trance, but they blame him for messing with them. He doesn’t speak again after the incident, and it looks like he may have had a mental breakdown. Tony wants to quit, but Mac persuades him to stay.
Diane, the interviewer, asks Sara if Alex was fit to run the show, and Sara’s evasive about it.
It’s opening night, and there’s a huge line of people waiting to get in. They eventually open and start letting people in. Sara thinks she sees Paul wandering around. The cameras in the basement cut out, so no one knows what’s going on down there.
We finally get to see what happened in the basement: a portal to Hell opens up. Up in the attic, Alex has hanged himself, and there are cultists up there with him.
Back in the present, Diane and the cameraman decide to break into the Abaddon hotel and see what’s still in there. They leave, figuring it’ll take about an hour.
Meanwhile, Mitchell continues going through Sara’s old footage. It contains Paul beating Sara to death, so who was it that they just interviewed? Paul then cuts his own throat and dies on camera.
Diane and the cameraman break in and start taking video of the insides of the hotel, but the cameraman refuses to go into the basement. They go upstairs and find Sara in the bedroom with cultists. Both Diane and the cameraman vanish.
Commentary
It’s basically a documentary surrounding found footage bits. There are many small details and short scenes that I didn’t go into in the synopsis above—there’s a lot going on here, with a great deal of weirdness. It was filmed on the site of a real haunted house attraction built into a real abandoned hotel, which makes it a really good setting.
The released version of the film was 1 hour and 33 minutes, so the director’s cut added more than half an hour of extra stuff. Most of the extras are just slightly stretched-out versions of scenes we already saw along with cast auditions.
It’s good!