Low-budget indie horror movies are a dime a dozen, and many are nothing to get excited about. But with his 2015 movie Hell House LLC, Stephen Cognetti proved that low budget horror could be of high quality, especially if the story is engaging and actually scary. Hell House LLC gained a following fairly quickly, and the whole franchise (consisting of four films, with another on the way) is very popular amongst genre fans.
Now Cognetti has steered away from the story of the Abaddon Hotel for the first time with 825 Forest Road. It’s a haunted location story with a unique twist: it’s not a house that is haunted, it’s an entire town.
Chuck and his wife Maria move to Ashland Falls after the death of his mother in a car accident, bringing Chuck’s younger sister Isabelle with them. She has suffered some trauma, being that she was in the car when the accident happened, and will be attending the local college on an art scholarship.
Soon after moving in, some odd things begin to happen. Leaks pop up throughout the entire house, Maria’s dressmaking mannequin Martha starts showing up in unexpected locations, and a neighbor begins to clue Chuck in on what’s going on with the town.
In the 1940s, Helen Foster’s young daughter Mary was being bullied at school, but Helen’s pleas for help from the people in town were ignored, and Mary eventually ended up taking her own life. What the townspeople believe is that Helen basically cursed all of Ashland Falls, resulting in multiple suicides and ghostly events.
Sometime after this event, the maps and street names were changed, and now people think if they can locate Helen’s address (825 Forest Road), which no longer exists, they can lift the curse by burning the house down. An entire club dedicated to locating the faux address has been formed, but they are having no luck.
Chuck and Isabelle are both on a mission to find the Foster home, but have to contend with supernatural happenings along the way. Meanwhile, poor Maria is caught up in the crossfire, and her mental state starts to suffer.
As with his other films, Cognetti has cast no big-name actors, and some of the performances are better than others. But, the storyline is very compelling and the scares are plentiful. The story builds slowly at first, but everything amps up nicely, and the final twenty minutes are harrowing and intense.
I really loved the way the story unfolded bit by bit, with plenty of surprises and twists along the way. Fans of Hell House LLC should be happy to learn that there a few Easter Eggs sprinkled in as well. If you were creeped out by those clown figures, Martha the Mannequin wants them to hold her beer. There is a sequence with Maria filming a sewing blog that is especially chilling. We can see Martha behind her, and…well, I am not giving any spoilers here, so you will have to watch 825 Forest Road for yourself.
I continue to be impressed with the work Stephen Cognetti does, and how he is able to create such spooky stories with practical special effects and unknown actors. 825 Forest Road can be seen exclusively on Shudder, and Cognetti’s next Hell House LLC film (Hell House LLC: Lineage) should be coming to the horror platform in October.