Hell House (2001)

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Director: George Ratliff

Oddities, Obscurties and One-Offs

As a documentary unfortunately under seen, Hell House offers the curious counterbalance to Halloween in the "hell house", which were innovated within American conservative Christian culture through Jerry Falwell in the late seventies, to which the Presbyterian church Trinity Church Youth Group is the subject of this film, making a haunted house for Halloween that depict the worst in humanity and the fires of Hell to scare people to Jesus. Director George Ratliff first tackled the subjects in a short documentary (1999's The Devil Made Me Do It) before expanding it into a feature.

Notably, and probably the huge virtue of Hell House the documentary is that it doesn't take a bias viewpoint but an entirely subjective view to a very controversial subject, significant in that we confuse debating religious and moral ideas for troublesome qualities for anti-religious attitudes and a lack of collected, thoughtful opinion. Make no bones about it, a trigger warning is required for watching the film as, even whilst they have fake blood and cheesy amateur acting from the church's youth members, these hell houses can be unsettling for their subject matter and take on, as in this case, conservative attitudes which are problematic.

The idea of taking the modern world, in its harshness, and scaring people to thought rather than just goose bumps is a thoughtful concept; Christianity has a tenant of wanting to help people to salvation, and they do so by bringing up the worst of a society that lacks compassion and virtue, which is something which can be implemented by a person secular or religious to bringing about contemplation. The issue, which is where I'd argue has become a huge factor into religion losing ground in importance especially in the late 20th century onwards, is that as modern society has taken on more reflective viewpoints on these subjects, the ideas particularly seen in this particular hell house are offensive, insensitive and naive.

The Trinity Church Youth Group got controversial, and had media attention, because they recreated the Columbine high school shootings of 1999. To take a controversial stance, if done with sensibleness and respect to those who had die, you could recreate such an event if you intended to show people the perilous slippery slope leading to the horror and tragedy of the event; here however, even referencing the media scare fear that video games were responsible, with Doom (the old one) playing on a TV, there's a complete lack of subtlety, mere shock tactics made even more startling as, in mind that blanks are still dangerous to use, the Church use actual fire arms and fire them into the ceiling. Then there are the other exhibitions.

A gay man dying of AIDs and going to Hell, including the idea that he became gay because he was abused by his uncle, is homophobic and in the last part arguably childish, in how it comes off as an immature attitude that does not comprehend a far more complex worldview and adult would develop, thus falls into a problematic stereotype that has rightly been written off over the years¹. A girl who is date raped in a nightclub commits suicide and goes to Hell is another pronounced example, which has become far more problematic as mental health has become a greater issue in the current times, the attitude of suicide immediately condemns a person is itself becoming an abhorrent attitude to many. Arguably, its examples like those two I have mentioned that has helped pushed people away from Christianity and religion in general, due to a viewed lack of empathy or even humanity, even without anyone asking if they actually believe in a God or not. Also the general tone of the hell house you witness, recorded by the production from its planning for that year to the final act opened on Halloween, has a sub current of patronisation, in which the last part of the house is a room where people only have a few minutes, if that, to go into a prayer room or to symbolically be walked out the hell house with a sense of shame.

What's fascinating with Hell House the documentary, and why it's such a virtuous piece of film making in a time when unfortunately the genre became weighed down by bias and lack of clarity, blameable on people like Michael Moore who went to tubthumping his ideals, is that whilst all the following can be plucked from its material, it also finds that sense of complexity too in them, that the creators of these hell houses are still human beings who are not one dimensional monsters, but figures with their own complex emotional baggage and moments where you can even still sympathise with them.

If you can get past of the troublesome ideas they pass on, you see that the naivety, as a result of where they've closed themselves off to the point of having their own Christian schools, is a factor in where the problems with their ideologies originate, how that without fully connecting to ordinary live outside the Church their ideas seem antiquated if not offensive. A poor female secretary is lost when the head who puts together the hell house, Bob, tries to explain to her what Magic: The Gathering is with neither of them clearly knowing what it is, a fantasy card game that was popular at the time which goes into their black magic, Satanist exhibit which is woefully misinformed. Full on Satanic panic, its literally a black magic human sacrificing ritual which, briefly seen, if comedic and completely neuters the entire hell house, envisioning that reading Harry Potter and playing Magic: The Gathering is enough to become one with Satan. Something as simple as the guy who plays the nightclub DJ having to actually bring in knowledge of night club life, because he felt it was woefully inaccurate, is a reminder that this is "middle America"; other times its something as woefully misguided as wanting to decorate sets with a 5-pointed pentagram, but accidentally putting up the 6-pointed Star of David, where one goes from the gut without clarity and lead to howlers like this.

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Yet the film also succeeds in even gaining sympathy for these people, because the little we get from when they speak complicates them. Hell House is a standard documentary but one that succeeds as a document rather than cinematic in a way that shouldn't be an insult, doing so much that even if you see this group of Christians as a community, even speaking in tongues at one point, you also have them as ordinary people rather than the stereotypical villainous zealots. Particularly as simplifying sides has become a huge issue regardless of political belief, made worse in the late 2010s, the greyness of these figures is fascinatingly radical. Personal stories are interspersed in direct-to-camera interviews, and a few are eye raisers, such as one woman who discusses that she was raped when she was younger and, playing the teen date rape victim who commits suicide, saw her rapist among the patrons there, an emotionally complex issue which led to her forgiving him, a controversial but really powerful concept which is one of Christianity's best virtues that it is possible to even forgive someone who has committed the worst transgression to you.

The man who runs the Hell House, Bob, is also such a complicated figure with so much emotional baggage left unpacked in what we see he should've eventually had gone for therapy even if he felt his faith was enough. Single, his wife walked out with someone she met on the internet and left him with four kids, his youngest son also an infant with cerebral palsy, a fit caught on camera one of the most harrowing moments. Whilst he comes off as an emotionally steady person at first, focused entirely on the Hell House attraction, he notably wrote part of his own life into an exhibition of domestic abuse. Specifically even referencing the dalliance on the web of the wife, whilst it comes off as part of the healing process, seeing him suddenly in tears watching this performance realises many issues in his person.

Even if you cannot get past their beliefs, one scene is there where one person makes the most powerful agreement against the hell house, in one sentence, in how it lacks the complexity of the outside world. It's a thought made by a young woman in a red Slipknot hoodie and hits the nail on the head fully and potently. The scene in question was wisely the only one where the director ever shows a criticism of the Church's work, in which her male friend in a Fear Factory is emotionally angry and, despite using "faggot" a lot, is actually offended by the blatant homophobia, between him and his two friends actually referencing liberal Christian ideas.  That his female friend hits upon this argument of hers with full impact makes the point for their side fully, whilst the staff member debating with them can merely say their work is a subjective exhibition meant to encourage thought. It was the entire documentary ever needed to do and it adds more to ponder alongside the great material it shows around the scene from the Church's side.

If I am to bring in my own opinion, than let me admit one thing, that I have always found the concept of Hell in itself in Christianity always had a logistical flaw I found problematic. As someone who isn't part of an organised religion but does believe in a deity and human soul of an unknown form, Hell has always as a concept come both as a) a mere scare tactic which it always was in terms of being a threat to force people to be good, like a bogeyman to scare children to go to bed, and b) very simplified to the point that if you over think it, there are paradoxes. No complex deity would want to let a Devil have most peoples' souls, through damnation, and would provide forgiveness and eternal life instead, and no sane Devil would encourage an image of themselves as the punisher of wickedness when, if you go by the more human version painted in Thomas Milton's Paradise Lost, the more subversive ideal would be to band as many souls together to slight God.

These are ideas which people do hold as real and to be respected, but a very simplified view of Hell does exist in most people's mind which doesn't presume the actual complexities of human emotions. Likewise, Jesus Christ dying for the sins of all humanity as the Son of God so they could all be forgiven, through the most agonising death of crucifixion in the mortal human flesh, completely negates both the idea of Hell as a concept. A huge, problematic elephant of how a lot of conservative Christian culture from the United States worship, even if you have to first content with the likes of their homophobia, is faintly found here as well in the documentary, in how the Church can be said to argue that you have to worship the right God under the right Church, not as severe as an Estus Pirkle piece but still to be found in these hell houses. There is an irony to this as the Church itself is quaint - they are ordinary people, who say that their ideas are their own and they are open to be thought of by outsiders. It also doesn't ignore that, when casting, most of their youth group is a lot more excited to play the teen suicide or a devil than say an angel, a tantalising vicarious pleasure clearly had in the dark side even from these people meant to be virtuous. Hell is apparently more creativity rewarding than Heaven, which is a question in itself to ask

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As for the director himself? George Ratliff went into fiction cinema, including a 2018 work Welcome Home that, by all accounts, is a soft-softcore thriller with not a lot of softcore. It's a weird tangent to end up in after making such a great documentary a decade earlier.

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1) Reflecting on the Church's clear disconnect from the world around them, a lot of anti-gay Christian rhetoric clearly comes from people that don't understand the ordinary life of an LGBTQ person, and this kind of rhetoric is clearly where a split between more liberal Christians (and gay Christians) from more conservative ones came to be. Personally I blame the fact that, in lieu to also how the ancient texts have been translated over millennia, if we're just sticking to the New Testament its particularly the likes of Romans 1:26–27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 which are the biggest offenders for this attitude, in how even explicit in their tenants they were influenced by millennia of translation and just the viewpoints of their scribes. Then there's the confusion to what "sodomite" in lieu to the original sings of Sodom and Gomorrah actually were, which has not helped.