825 Forest Road is now streaming on Shudder.
Writer and director Stephen Cognetti is ready to be known as more than the “Hell House LLC Guy.” Unfortunately, his latest movie won’t help him accomplish that goal. 825 Forest Road ditches the found-footage Halloween scares of Cognetti’s directorial debut and its sequels for a more traditional approach to horror. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as engaging or inventive as those four (and counting) trips to the cursed Abaddon Hotel. 825 Forest Road is a tangle of feeble lore, jumbled storytelling jumps, and an upsetting mannequin who’s scary, but can’t quite escape the shadow of the terrifyingly mobile clown dummies that stalk the Hell House movies.
The ingredients of his past success are all in place: 825 Forest Road brings a malevolent force and unsuspecting victims to the central location of the title. Chuck Wilson (Joe Falcone), his seamstress wife Maria (Elizabeth Vermilyea), and his artistic younger sister Isabelle (Kathryn Miller) leave tragedy behind to make a fresh start in the small town of Ashland Falls. But Ashland’s darkest supernatural secret eventrually comes a-knocking at Chuck’s front door: Her name is Helen Foster (Diomira Keane), and untimely deaths are her calling card. Cue the stock possession-horror thrills as the trio’s spacious yet surprisingly affordable home is infested by a vengeful spirit that Helen eventually channels into Maria’s disturbing antique mannequin, “Martha.”
There’s no visual imagination to be found in 825 Forest Road. Ashland Falls is portrayed like any other humble American community, no different from the settings of the 50 other scrappy little haunted-house movies you’ll see this year. The character Cognetti brought to Hell House LLC’s monstrous attraction doesn’t extend to 825 Forest Road, either – with its architectural stuffiness and generic production design, the house might as well be an unoccupied model in the middle of a new housing development. And without the found-footage hook, the filmmaking lacks pop, sucking the life out of Chuck’s residential nightmare.
Cognetti also miscalculates the durability of his storytelling, splitting 825 Forest Road into three repetitive chapters focused on a different member of the family. We follow Chuck, Irene, and Maria as they interact with Helen throughout the same sorta-spooky events, but the momentum is choppy at best – nothing revealed along the way is thunderous enough to be rewound multiple times. Cognetti struggles to bring his concept to life, whether it’s Helen’s underbaked backstory or the counterintuitive motivations that peg Chuck’s crew as mindless cannon fodder. A few valiant efforts are made to prop up the exposition – like introducing the town’s underground paranormal discussion group – but if the devil’s in the details, he’s on vacation.
I’ll admit: Martha the mannequin – with her crackly, papier-mâché complexion and habit of turning up where you least expect her – makes an effective antagonist. As Helen taunts the befuddled residents of 825 Forest Road by puppeting Martha around the house, Cognetti calls back to his nerve-shredding usage of Hell House LLC’s bald-and-painted clown prop. The ghastly figure makes a good jump scare (when she’s not a shoddy digital effect), but 825 Forest Road is never scarier than when Martha gains mobility, scampering about like one of Donna Beneviento’s Resident Evil Village minions. So much of 825 Forest Road is a struggle, but not when Cognetti reminds us why Hell House LLC garnered a ravenous following addicted to blood-pumping terrors. If only the Martha material had a more powerful, lingering effect.
The rest of 825 Forest Road stumbles through the motions. The performances are a serviceable crop, but the cast doesn’t give you anything that’ll stay seared in your memory. Cognetti recycles a few tricks from his Hell House LLC experiences, but they’re less impactful without the intimacy found-footage can provide. Then there’s the death blow of the final act, an anticlimax that fades to black at the worst possible moment. The kernel of an idea in 825 Forest Road never puffs into something tastier – it’s the hardened shell at the bottom of Cognetti’s bowl of savory found-footage frights. Perhaps the upcoming Hell House LLC: Lineage will prove a better method of closing the door on this chapter of his career.
