Evil never truly dies in horror, especially not when sequel potential looms near. Writer/Director Stephen Cognetti previously teased that the fifth entry in his popular found footage franchise would likely act as the final and scariest installment, a tantalizing claim considering what a chilling return to form that previous entry, Carmichael Manor, offered.

Hell House LLC: Lineage makes its transition into traditional narrative filmmaking, emphasizing and expanding the increasingly dense and convoluted Abaddon lore in a way that’s unwelcoming to newcomers. In the process, it loses its atmospheric edge and ability to scare.

Lineage reintroduces Vanessa Sheppard (Elizabeth Vermilyea), the journalist from Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire, now haunted by eerie visions stemming from her encounter at the Abaddon Hotel. Not helping her residual trauma is the fact that she’s now a bar owner in Abaddon, and she’s far from alone with her ghastly visions; neighbors all across town are plagued by haunting hallucinations and death. People are mysteriously dying, pulling Vanessa back into investigative mode as she, along with others, delves into decades of murders tied to Abaddon in search of answers.

If it’s not already clear, Lineage isn’t the most accessible film of the franchise. Cognetti, who’s written and directed all five installments, only continues to build upon the intricate mythos involving a Hellish cult, their murderous machinations, and the various characters caught in their crosshairs over decades. It’s not just Vanessa returning here, but Carmichael Manor journalist Alicia (Searra Sawka), operating separately from Vanessa to thwart the source of Abaddon’s pesky demonic horror problem.

While Alicia is taking on a much more active role here, also look for Carmichael Manor returnees Father Margaret and Patrick Carmichael (Victoria Andrunik and Gideon Berger, respectively) to pick up from the narrative threads introduced in the prequel. Cognetti spends considerable time and effort connecting the plot points dispersed across multiple films, so much so that it comes at the expense of everything else.

That Lineage seeks to expand its storytelling scope to the town itself, beyond the haunted walls of the Abaddon Hotel or the Carmichael Manor, sounds more exciting in theory than in execution. The fifth entry mostly trades a central spooky set piece for a series of more mundane set pieces meant to capture the town itself, from Vanessa’s bar to therapy offices to scenic cliffsides. Outside of nightmare-like visions, though, Cognetti struggles to place scares within the more everyday settings. The Halloween season backdrop provides opportunities to bring back the franchise’s favorite clown for a broad daylight scare or two, but the traditional format proves more unwieldy for Cognetti when it comes to recreating the discomforting atmosphere of previous films.

That’s if the filmmaker remembers to scare at all; there’s too much ground to cover and too many questions raised over five films to leave room for much else, including character development. Vermilyea’s Vanessa has no agency in a film that positions her as a chosen survivor, alluding to some of the overarching biblical themes, and Sawka is saddled with a rash character forced to make the worst possible choices in a horror movie for plot contrivance’s sake. Where that leaves Alicia is but one of many frustrations raised by Lineage; the most notable being the sequel’s unsatisfying denouement.

Instead of offering any semblance of self-contained closure in a film that dangled the possibility of finality, Lineage instead runs out of steam with a non-ending so abrupt that it earns an unintended laugh of incredulity. Hell House LLC: Lineage isn’t the final chapter; it’s a penultimate episode. Whether that’s for a series finale or a season finale, to get metaphorical, remains to be seen. But it does summarize Lineage in a nutshell; the fifth entry doesn’t function as a movie on its own accord. Instead, it’s an exposition-heavy chapter of an ongoing saga, one devoid of scares, atmosphere, or even character arcs.

If you’re not well-versed in Hell House LLC lore and its characters, then you’re in trouble; not even Cognetti can make the dense plotting coherent to newcomers in this sequel. That it’s not scary at all means that there’s nothing to grab hold of for anyone except maybe the franchise’s most devoted fans.

Hell House LLC: Lineage releases in theaters on August 20, 2025.