Hell House (George Ratliff)
Considering its subject–a Fundamentalist Christian “haunted house” designed to alert teenagers to the depravity of modern culture through a series of lurid skits–this documentary is surprisingly even-handed. There’s no evidence in the film that the Hell Housers are anything but sincere in their beliefs, and the movie is largely free of blatant critical commentary (though one of the funniest scenes finds a house bigwig confronted by a gang of dissenting teens). The laughs, and there are many, are generally good-natured as well; a typical gag involves young staffers debating how to reference Magic: The Gathering cards as a corrupting influence in one of their scenes. Ratliff makes a few missteps, but his decision to be as objective as possible was the right one, I think. Hell House is strange and illuminating–a notch above most subculture docs. B
