Hell House

TIFF [2001]

(USA 2001, 85 minutes)
Directed by George Ratcliffe
Documentary

Movie Review

Not everyone believes that hell is a real place and few of us find occasion to speak in tongues, but this assured portrait of a distinctly American phenomenon reveals a universal need to alleviate the anxiety of a tumultuous world. - Sean Farnel

A real-life "Waiting For Guffman" crossed with the Hellfire-And-Brimstone extremes of a Jack Chick fundamentalist tract (those rather hysterical religious comics you might have found in a laundromat), George Ratcliffe's documentary "Hell House" chronicles the damnedest thing I've seen in ages (pun intended): for the past ten years, the Trinity Christian School in Cedar Hill, Texas, has presented "Hell House", literally, a house of horrors tour depicting not the fictitious evils of witches and zombies, but the very real "sins" of drugs, AIDS, suicide, abortion, incest, and school violence (Trinity's graphic Columbine scene drew record crowds in 1999).

Focusing on last year's "Hell House X", Ratcliffe presents a remarkably fair look at the event's conceptualization, rehearsal, construction, and eventual October 31 presentation, complete with the usual backstage technical gaffes (a Star Of David mistakenly drawn for a Pentagram) and mixed response from an audience that is not always willing to echo the performers' rather rigid sentiment. Subplots focus on specific participants, most memorably, a "stage father", single after his wife has left him for a chatroom lover, who lovingly dotes on his children and even allows his personal trauma as a basis for one of the sketches. One gets a sense that "Hell House" is as much a cathartic release for Cedar Hill's teens (many are eager to participate in the Rave rape sketch, if for no other reason than to "get to dance"), as it is a pageant of some rather hysterical spiritual parables.

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I'm not a terribly religious person, and I have a hard time warming up to an organization that uses cheesy terror tactics to instill "faith" in its followers, but I must say that I liked many of the people I saw partaking in "Hell House", who came off as sincere and no worse than "misfired" in their crusade to save America's souls. Ratcliff resists the opportunities to present those at Trinity as a subculture of desperate zealots, and it's a testament to his skill as a filmmaker and journalist that those in Cedar Hill reportedly love the film and the depiction of their world view, while many others will certainly shudder in disbelief.

Surprisingly, at the time of this writing, "Hell House" had not found a distributor.

George Ratliff began his career in journalism. A graduate of the film programme at the University of Texas at Austin, he worked as a producer/director for "Split Screen" on the Independent Film Channel. His debut documentary Plutonium Circus (95) won several awards, including best documentary feature at the South by Southwest film festival. Hell House (01) is his latest documentary.

- Robert L

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