Hell House LLC: Lineage (2025)
Hell House LLC: Lineage: Stephen Cognetti, don’t read this. | 0.5/5
Written by Noah Dietz: 8/21/2025
At 9:57 am on August 20, 2025, writer and director of the film Hell House LLC: Lineage, Stephen Cognetti, tweeted the following:
“Hell House LLC Lineage is 100% for the fans! It’s deep in Abaddon lore and story and of course full of scares. I hope you have fun with it! I’m sad to say goodbye, but thank you for all the love and support over the years!”
In May of 2024 we decided to cover Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor for the podcast. In preparation I rewatched the first film, as well as its two sequels. I love the first film, and I ended up really enjoying the fourth film (something that unnerved me enough that I couldn’t sleep) a great deal! Both Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel and Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire were a bit of a wash, but I was willing to tactfully ignore those in favor of the two strong bookends to the franchise we had received. When I saw an untitled Hell House sequel in the works, I was excited. Cognetti had the sauce back, and he was ready to bring us big things. Unfortunately between watching Carmichael Manor and the newest entry here, I watched the film he put out in the middle. After watching 825 Forest Road I was worried. We had gotten confirmation that Lineage wasn’t going to be a found footage film, and frankly I wasn’t very impressed with what 825 Forest Road had given us in terms of writing or filming. I couldn’t understand why the man would kneecap himself by removing the franchise’s defining strength. Which brings us here, to what Cognetti has excitedly placed as the capstone of the Hell House LLC films.
To put it bluntly, Hell House LLC: Lineage is the lowest point of a faltering franchise. Bogged down by exposition and an assumption that everyone watching had just finished all four of the previous films on their way to the theater, Lineage is simultaneously confusing, boring, and vapid. I have said this in other reviews but I doubly mean it here: the sheer number of characters who were revealed here like Marvel cameos astounded me. People from the second and third films were trotted out on the screen like someone I should know and care about, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out who they were supposed to have been till I was checking my phone after the fact. An “incredibly important” reveal at the end of the film didn’t land for me at all, and it’s because this film focused on its overly dense web of interconnected plot points rather than embracing something that could stand on its own two feet. I couldn’t care less about some of the struggles our lead was going through, and most of that is because instead of giving us a legitimate new chapter or even meaningful growth for an old one, we’re stuck with vacuuming up all the mystery of the previous films. Finally, after posthumously draining them of their secrets, Lineage sets up a sixth film. Cognetti’s “I’m sad to say goodbye” tweet signals an ending to what we have, but the final moments of the very film that claims to be a sendoff makes it clear that the story isn’t complete. We end on a cliffhanger, cutting hard to a closing title card instead of concluding the little we’ve managed to build up in this film.
So many scenes here made no sense, to the point that my friends and I wondered if AI had been involved in the writing room. The circular conversation that’s had with the priest at the halfway point was so inane it led us to question if anyone had even had their hands on this incredibly tepid film at all. This brings me to what’s easily the greatest flaw. Frankly, none of these problems would bother me nearly as much if Lineage had at least been scary. I think I jumped twice over the course of an almost two-hour film, which is incredibly depressing. The creeping and looming dread of the past has been removed, with only a single sequence near the beginning bringing even the tiniest taste of the fear that had been present in the past. The atmosphere of the film is stagnant, painfully reaching for any moments from the past to bring meaning to scenes that are otherwise just sitting here. There are a couple moments with decent effects, but the one on-screen kill we get just looked … goofy. Too many times we were forced to rely on out-of-focus background movement to provide our horror, or shots that pan away and pan back to something that wasn’t there before. It’s tired, and Cognetti himself already did the same tricks better in the other entries.
I’m saddened that a film that was “100% for the fans” wasn’t made for fans of movies, and rather was for fans of the inclusion of lore for the sake of lore. I’m sure I’ll hear plenty of people say that I’m being too harsh, and that I’m “just not a real fan” for not liking this, but even as the fifth installment this should have been watchable. “For the fans” is a crutch used to wash away an ocean of sins, hiding flaws behind more coats of white latex paint than the average slumlord. It’s a bulletproof shield against all criticism that uncritical fans will throw out to avoid reckoning with the fact that something they wanted to enjoy was actually horrendous. I feel the first film is a borderline masterwork of a found footage film, and it’s devastating to be forced to realize Cognetti seems to have run out of compelling ideas.