We are introduced to various people involved in the project, from the single father who desperately hopes his daughter will win the role of "Rape Girl" to the church's resident techboy who claims to know all sorts of nasty things about raves and seems to have a serious obsession with date-rape drugs. Several other characters will come to light in due time.
There is a creepiness to this project that the participants are probably unaware of. Like most Christians I've met, they are all morbidly obsessed with all manner of sin: abortion, rape, homosexuality, drugs, witchcraft, and on and on. They seem to spend hour after hour talking about, discussing and rehearsing those very things that they condemn, with great enthusiasm. One of the church's so-called youth leaders casts himself as a gang banger; during the performance he threatens a member of another gang (played one of two black people in the entire project) with a real gun, repeatedly calling the kid "boy" and even resorting to the dreaded "N" word. He's really into the performance, so much so that one wonders if he might be experiencing sexual arousal from the activity.
Then we come to witchraft/satanism. We learn early on that the Harry Potter books are actually gateways to satanic practices, a point which is illustrated in the show itself. In one o
f the film's most telling moments, two church members are discussing the portrayal of witchcraft: they debate whether red or white is the preferred color of devil-worshippers until they recall the advice of a 'warlock' who visited Hell House several years before. In the end, they paint a pentagram in red, with but one small problem: the idiots have painted a Star of David, NOT a pentagram. We can only wonder if this was an honest mistake, a deliberate anti-Jewish statement, or just grotesque ignorance.Overall, I'd have to say that my favorite of all the characters in this bizarre project is the roofie-obsessed rave officianado. Claiming to have been to at least one rave, his recollections are vivid, to say the least as he tells of the rampant drug use and promiscuous behavior he observed but obviously didn't participate in. To add "realism" to his pet tableau, he spray paints all sorts of 'rave' stuff on the walls, including his IM handle and personal web address. Yep, that'll teach them kids about the evils of rave and the benefit of shameless self-promotion!
Lessons learned from that year's Hell House include:
Raves = drug use = rape = suicide = Hell.
Gangs = violence = Hell.
Harry Potter = Satanism = Hell.
Morning after pill = spectacular white-pants bleedout = death = Hell.
Depression = suicide = Hell.
Adultery = domestic violence = murder = Hell.
Molestation = homosexuality = AIDS = Hell.
If only the rest of the world was as simple and black-and-white as it's portrayed. Naturally, the last display of Hell House is the big money shot, Hell itself. Maybe I'm a little jaded, but thr version of Hell they show is pretty pussified, compared to all the carnage that preceded it. After experiencing eternal damnation for five minutes or so, guests are ushered into what, for my money, was the scariest part of the entire thing: A clean, well-lit room whose inhabitant is an angry man (the other black guy) who pressures guests to walk into the next room to get saved. I should point out that, as far as I could see, the ONLY door out of this room was the door to the church counselors. There may have been a "thanks but no thanks" exit, but I didn't see one.
I have to give the filmmakers much credit for keeping the film even and unbiased, for which the people in it are all the more horrifying. The true evils of Hell House are the rampant ignorance, fear, obsessions, homophobia and outright stupidity that these people enable within themselves and those around them.
Posts
