In 2016, “Hell House LLC” was released via streaming where it soon gained the attention of found footage horror fans. 10 years later and the franchise’s fifth and final installment, “Hell House LLC: Lineage” just hit theaters. Unfortunately it seems that the series is leaving on a strange and sour note.
Some reports say viewers were walking out of early screenings for “Lineage.” The reviews coming in were apparently so bad that producer and President of Terror Films Releasing, Joe Dain, took to the official “Hell House LLC” Facebook, asking fans to keep bad reviews off Rotten Tomatoes. Despite it having “a 74% audience score and a FULL BOX OF POPCORN on Rotten Tomatoes as of today (8/21)” the day of the post.
Dain’s Response to “Hell House LLC: Lineage” Critics
Dain asked fans to be more specific with their criticisms. “… there are those who HATED this installment,” he writes. “ALL of those reactions are valid. HOWEVER, I have 2 requests for those who HATED this installment:
1) If you truly did not like the film, PLEASE have something more constructive to say rather than calling the film TRASH, GARBAGE or a POS. That’s counter productive, is an insult to the time and effort that went into making the film, and it’s not helpful for the creative team.”
Later on he uses the fourth film, “The Carmichael Manor,” as an example of how the franchise improved by listening to fan feedback.
To be fair, we are sure all artists have said some version of this request at some point. Because Dain is right, just calling something trash is counter productive to improving the final product. These kinds of low effort negative reviews can really hurt a film’s standing on websites like Rotten Tomatoes, limiting potential audiences. So there is extra incentive to ask fans for a bit more detail when venting their frustration online.
However, as a creator, you don’t get to pick and choose how or where your work is discussed. Dain’s first request was seen as entitled by some, but his second request is what has fans up in arms.
The Problem
“2) If you’re going to leave a negative review (which you’re entitled to do), try to not only give it some thought but leave those reviews on IMDB, Letterboxd or Reddit and leave the GOOD reviews for those who liked the film for Rotten Tomatoes. Why? Because the RT score shows up on many of the platforms and in order for there to possibly be another installment like Origins, it requires the support of positive audience scores. I’ve attached the RT scores of all the films below as a refresher.”
This is a stance he doubled down on in the comments. Repeatedly replying to several mixed and negative reviews with “please be sure to leave us a good review on Rotten Tomatoes.” Not like a variant of that particular sentence either. That specific phrase was obviously copy pasted over and over again. Even after fans called out how bad that kind of canned response looks on a post like this.
“Hell House LLC: Lineage” is far from the first film to try to manipulate reviews like this, but it’s probably the most blatant example. This could be part of why just four days after this post the movie sports a 23% on the Tomatometer with a 53% on the Popcornmeter. When will companies learn that folks on the internet really do not like being told what to do?
Why The Bad Reviews?
One of the biggest grievances seems to be the fact that “Lineage” isn’t found footage, like the previous four entries. The problem here is, that style was the draw for a lot of the original “Hell House LLC” fandom. But audiences have been voicing objections to this change since the first trailer. So it’s hard to believe the team behind it is surprised that the reaction remained negative.
The majority of negative reviews say that the ending is where everything really falls apart. Most are calling it a “cliffhanger” or just a lack of an ending. All of these well thought out criticisms were easily accessible via Rotten Tomatoes and comments on Facebook, some of which Dain even responded to.
We get that criticism hurts, but trying to scrub or manipulate public reaction to your work pretty much always backfires. Sometimes you try your best and it just doesn’t connect with audiences. It sucks but it’s also not the audience’s fault the overwhelming majority of the time.
“Hell House LLC: Lineage” is out now in selected theaters and will hit Shudder in October. You can read Dain’s full post below before it gets laugh reacted into oblivion:
