Metacritic Film

Hell House

Starring Tim Ferguson, Bill Humphrey, Pastor Hennesy, Virginia McAlester, and Lee McAlester

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Seventh Art Releasing
Documentary
85 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters November 15, 2002

This documentary profiles a Pentecostal church in Texas that uses a Halloween haunted house, complete with fire and brimstone, to scare teenagers about issues such as AIDS, abortion and school shootings.

DIRECTED BY
George Ratliff

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

64 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Christian Science Monitor
The result is a lively, insightful look at multiple levels of self-delusion among people who truly believe their Halloween funhouse is making our fallen world a better place.
75 New York Post
The scariest revelation in Ratliff's film is that the Texas Hell House has proved so popular that it's being copied all over the country. Heaven help us!
75 New York Daily News
Scary, all right, but not for the reasons the Dallas church had in mind.
70 Variety
Hell House is a slice of contempo life many viewers will find bizarre and disturbing, not necessarily in the precautionary-moral way its subjects intend. Briskly paced docu is well handled in tech departments.
60 TV Guide
For anyone unfamiliar with pentacostal practices in general and theatrical phenomenon of Hell Houses in particular, it's an eye-opener.
50 The New York Times
As a director, Mr. Ratliff wisely rejects the temptation to make fun of his subjects, most of whom seem to believe sincerely that they are doing the work of God.
50 Village Voice
Lookin' for sin, American-style? Try Hell House, which documents the cautionary Christian spook-a-rama of the same name.

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