Director: Stephen Cognetti
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Trying to get over the traumatic incidents, the lone survivor of the strange incidents at the hotel is slowly dragged back into a supernatural conspiracy connected to the location when several other victims get caught up in the frantic legacy of the house’s past, forcing her to finally stop it.
Review:
There was very little of this one that's worthwhile. Among the only good things with this one is the general atmosphere of the house where everything takes place, as this makes for a few solid attempts at suspense. This is mostly brought about in the finale, where the attempt to investigate the supposed house where the family affected by the curse lives, and the different ideas presented here about what types of figures are brought about inside that are trying to come to terms with the different figures inside the house, targeting and tormenting the group investigation, which helps this rather nicely. The type of haunted house scares from this setup makes the experience come together far better than expected, compared to the earlier encounters that focused more on the interactions with the clown as a centerpiece for the sequences, which is at least chilling enough to be somewhat enjoyable.
There are plenty of issues to be had here that hold this one down. The main drawback here is based on one of the most confusing and wildly underwhelming storylines, which makes it nearly impossible to follow up on what’s happening. The different timeline here seemingly ignores the sequels after the original since they only focus on the survivor from the original and reference it as taking place only recently, while also making mention of what happened in the prequel to tie everything together. However, little of that makes any sense and has to be spelled out in the form of several info dumps that do nothing but lay the groundwork for the connections here to make sense, while nothing else can even remotely come together coherently based on the information given here. As the film also has the problem where it seems to stop rather than naturally end at a logical point, only to instead ends with more questions than anything.
The other issue here is that there’s so little action and far too much time on investigations that the film is sluggish and immensely boring for most of its running time. Running around the time trying to learn about the tragedy that has afflicted the family and the various heirs who are soon thrust into the supernatural shenanigans of the hotel’s denizens takes so much of the film’s running time that it just feels lifeless and underwhelming, with the sluggish atmosphere barely generating any kind of suspense or thrills in what’s going on. Even attempts at making the killer clown the central figure by trying to make it a main villain in the stalking scenes make for a rather disappointing time here, with mismanaged attack scenes that put the clown in full view way too often in too bright a light to make everything feel less suspenseful than it should. These all manage to bring this one down.
Overview: 0.5/5
A barely worthwhile and problematic conclusion to the series, there’s little reason to give this a shot, and it only has some minor positives to counteract those issues present throughout here. Those with an appreciation of the franchise or who are curious about the presentation will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed extreme caution.
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