Worth Mentioning - Science Can't Explain This

 We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

Cody sits through a trio of hellish horror movies.

HELL'S TRAP (1989)

In the early 1990s, one of the video stores in my hometown added a small selection of Spanish movies. I remember looking at the covers and wondering about the movies, but I never rented them because I wouldn't be able to understand them, and they probably didn't have English subtitles. Looking back, I've always been curious about the movies that were in the tiny Spanish movie section of that store. I wonder what they were, and if there were any gems among them like Hell's Trap.

Directed by Pedro Galindo III from a script he wrote with Santiago Galindo, Hell's Trap is a really cool '80s slasher movie that was made in Mexico. The story starts off by establishing the intense rivalry between Nacho (Pedro Fernandez) and Mauricio (Tono Mauri), as we see these two trade blows after Nacho beats Mauricio in a paintball competition. These two are always betting, competing, and fighting with each other, and Nacho's girlfriend Alejandra (Edith Gonzalez) is getting sick of it. When Mauricio suggests another competition, Nacho accepts - under the condition that this is the last bet they're ever going to make. It's definitely going to be that. A slasher is going to make sure there's no chance they'll be going back on this one.

Mauricio read in the paper that a bear has been killing hunters in an area called Filo de Caballo, a five hour drive away from where he and Nacho live. So the competition is this: they'll go out into the wilderness of Filo de Caballo and search for this man-eating bear. Whoever kills it is the winner. Problem is, there's no man-eating bear in that forest. The hunters were murdered by a masked man who kills anyone who ventures into his territory. To make sure we have enough victims to watch get knocked off one-by-one, Nacho and Mauricio are joined by Alejandra, Carlota (Marisol Santa Cruz), Viviana (Adriana Vega), Javier (Armando Galvan), and Nacho's humorous sidekick Charly (Charly Valentino).

On their way out into the wilderness, the group stops to get supplies from a guy who runs his business out of an old bus, Don Jeremias (Alfredo Gutierrez). As it turns out, Don Jeremias is the traditional slasher movie doomsayer, who warns them this wilderness is dangerous and tells them the history of the slasher: he's an American soldier named Jesse (Alberto Mejia Baron), who has gone crazy and thinks he's still at war. It's a good thing Don Jeremias has this information, because Jesse doesn't speak to tell the story himself.

Although he's sort of a Jason-meets-Rambo character and even has a name that's very close to Jason, Jesse also has a touch of Freddy to him, as he wears a glove with steel claws on the fingers. That's why his victims look like they've been mauled by a bear. Thankfully, he doesn't just claw everyone in the movie. Things are switched up to keep the deaths interesting. By the end of the film, Jesse is living up to his military background, firing a machine gun and tossing smoke grenades. Sometimes it's cool to see a slasher do things a little differently, and Hell's Trap has some choices that make it stand out from the pack as it goes on.

THE LAST POSSESSION (2022)

Directed by Dan Riddle from a screenplay by Greg Shouse, The Last Possession is the latest variation on a set-up we have seen many times before: a family moves into a house and almost immediately starts experiencing some paranormal activity. In this case, the family is the Peronis; parents Kent (Stephen Brodie) and Stephanie (Cassie Shea Watson), their young son Jack (Sawyer Bell) and their daughter Gabby (Lourelle Jensen). 

It's mentioned that Gabby is adopted, possibly only because the filmmakers wanted to cast Jensen and had to give a reason why she doesn't look like she would be the biological child of Brodie and Watson. It's not a big deal, as it shouldn't be. It's also mentioned that the only reason Kent is moving his family into this house, which he has inherited from his abusive, alcoholic father, is because they're having financial issues. This isn't an unusual aspect for movies like this; it even made me think of Stephen King's book Danse Macabre, where he said The Amityville Horror worked as well as it does because of its subtext of economic unease. He jokingly suggested that the movie could have been subtitled The Horror of the Shrinking Bank Account - and you could say the same of The Last Possession because Kent makes reference to their lack of money quite frequently. When the family needs to get out of their haunted house and stay in a hotel, he's worried their credit card will be declined. When help from a mystic is offered, his response is that he can't pay them. Being plagued by paranormal activity is one thing. Having to deal with ghosts when your cash is dwindling is even worse.

As a haunted house movie, this is really run-of-the-mill. We've seen most of this stuff before, and we've seen it done better. The cold room, the wrecked furniture, the glimpses of people in the house that shouldn't be there, someone being tossed around by an invisible force. Riddle and Shouse put in an effort to make their version of this scenario work by trying presenting the Peronis as realistic, relatable characters. Between scares, they talk not just about financial issues, but also have goofy banter about dress socks, pepperoni farts, and video games. But that doesn't keep The Last Possession from being underwhelming.

My favorite familiar element reminded me of a movie that wasn't a ghost story. On the Peronis' first night in this house, a blast of light leaves a large hole in the back yard, which they cover up with plywood. We're given reason to believe there's something in that hole, which made me think of the hole-in-the-yard from the 1987 classic The Gate.

This isn't just a haunted house movie itself. It's clear there's at least one ghost around, as we see Kent's dead father Roger (Tom Proctor) roaming around, but there's something else at play that makes The Last Possession unique - and also disappointing, because a subversion of expectations like this could have been handled much better and should have resulted in something more special than this movie comes off as being. I don't want to give the twist away, although you can easily figure it out from the marketing materials. A movie with a twist like this could have gotten people talking... but this one is more likely to be met with a shrug.

That said, it's a serviceable low budget movie that has its good aspects. While some of the acting is weak, some members of the cast do stand out in a very positive way - and here I have to give some attention to Patricia Rae as Granny Inez. The young grandmother to Kent's gun-toting co-worker Hector (Daniel Escudero), Inez is the mystic mentioned earlier, and when she enters the picture late in the running time she brings a great energy with her. She's the mystic mentioned earlier, and Rae made her a very fun character to watch. She also happens to be the character who provides the information some viewers will probably have already figured by the time Inez confirms it. But from the highs of Granny Inez we go to the lows of an ending I hated. I can't say I had a great time watching this movie, but if you go into it with low expectations you might find it to be a decent enough way to pass some time.

The review of The Last Possession originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

HELL HOUSE LLC (2015)

When I hear that a movie has been made in the “found footage” style, it’s an instant red flag for me. There have been some great found footage movies over the years, but I have been underwhelmed by the majority of them. So I always go into these things with low expectations… which is to the benefit of the movies, because sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. Like when I watched writer/director Stephen Cognetti’s Hell House LLC as part of a recent work assignment.

Hell House LLC was successful enough to spawn two sequels, but I hadn’t seen the movie and hadn’t paid much attention to any mentions of it in the six years since it was released. Once I did watch it, I found that it was a well-crafted movie that used the found footage style in a tolerable way, and was even effectively creepy at times.

It helps that the movie is set almost entirely within the confines of an abandoned hotel that’s being turned into a haunted house attraction. I have been through many haunted house attractions and find them to be an entertaining part of the Halloween season, so this movie was already earning good will from me from the start, when it shows video of a haunted house tour through this hotel that went terribly wrong. So wrong it resulted in the deaths of over a dozen people. The official cover-up is that the malfunction in the hotel was a gas leak, but that clearly wasn’t the case. In the tour video, we see several guests touring the haunted attraction starting to go down the stairs into the basement of the hotel – but they can’t, because the guests in front of them are freaking out, terrified, rushing back up the stairs. Haunted attractions are supposed to scare their guests, but not that badly. What happened in that basement?

The film then jumps back in time a bit to show the footage that was shot by the group that bought the abandoned hotel so they could turn it into the haunted attraction. They spent over a month working and sleeping in that place before the doors opened to the public, and there were strange things going on in there well before opening night. The Abaddon Hotel is home to something supernatural.

I won’t give away exactly what’s going on in that hotel. The movie actually keeps some of the answers obscured itself. Like I said, there were sequels to come. Cognetti was planning a sequel, so he couldn’t give everything away in the first movie. But even without everything being explained, Hell House LLC works just fine as a standalone horror movie. I still haven’t seen the sequels, but I would recommend the first movie to any horror fan. Even if you dislike the found footage style as much as I do, you might end up liking this one. Like I did.