By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Toby Poser, John Adams and Max Portman
Directed by John Adams and Toby Poser
Written by Lulu Adams, Toby Poser and John Adams
Shudder
There have been many movies since John Carpenter’s THE THING about isolated teams under attack by invasive creatures, but from the beginning, HELL HOLE is quite clearly the work of distinctive, idiosyncratic filmmakers. Those would be the Adams Family, who have made a mark on the genre with their scrappy DIY features THE DEEPER YOU DIG, HELLBENDER and WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS. Those films evinced a “family that plays together” ethos and, with father John Adams, mother Toby Poser and daughters Lulu and Zelda Adams co-starring as well as taking on the key behind-the-scenes tasks, made family dynamics intrinsic to their stories. As Lulu and Zelda were overseas or at college during the creation of HELL HOLE (which world-premiered at the current Fantasia International Film Festival ahead of its Shudder debut August 23), this one’s more about a group breakdown, with plenty of quirky character beats to offset the bloody life-or-death stakes.
A prologue set in 1814 finds a squad of Napoleon’s soldiers, led by SUBSPECIES’ Anders Hove as their captain, getting lost in Serbian territory. Salvation, at least in terms of much-needed food, seems to appear, before a bloody eruption sets loose a tentacled critter that gets inside one of the men through, er, an orifice that is not his mouth. Cut to the present day, and a fracking company that is violating/drilling into the Earth in the same area. Directors John Adams and Poser, working from a script they wrote with Lulu, aren’t exactly subtle with their metaphors, but that’s part of the fun and all of a piece with the ghastly/gory goings-on once their operation digs up something surprising.
That’s the aforementioned penetrated Frenchman, somehow still alive if not at all well after being entombed underground for two centuries. With all roads leading to the isolated site flooded out, left to figure out what to do with their unexpected “visitor” are team leader Emily (Poser), foreman John (Adams), Emily’s nephew Teddy (Max Portman), scientists Nikola (Aleksandar Trmčić) and Sofija (Olivera Peruničić)–the latter two keeping an eye on the operation’s environmental impact–and assorted local workers. Rather than tell a slow-burn story of paranoia and suspicion, however, the Adamses have their monster make its presence known pretty quickly, and thereafter work up plenty of jittery, giggly tension as it busts out of and into a succession of human hosts.
There’s a twist to just who the critter (which appears like a distant cousin of the beastie in THE KINDRED) is more inclined to invade, and it allows the Adamses to get a little allegorical about very current body/choice concerns. Rather than delve into relationships among an established family, HELL HOLE has fun exploring issues of birth–the formation of family–through the lens of a creature feature. This playful extra level is part of what marks this as an Adams project, setting it apart from other films of its ilk, and so do the offbeat characterizations and spiky, funny dialogue, particularly the many great lines Poser has written for herself as the no-nonsense, acerbic Emily.
Beyond that, HELL HOLE is also just a hell of a lot of grisly, icky fun that’s been put together with energetic craft. This is the first Adams feature that one or more of the brood haven’t shot themselves, and cinematographer Sean Dahlberg fits right into their aesthetic, capturing both the bleakness of the Serbian locations and the gushes of bright red punctuating the movie at regular intervals. Old-pro monster maker Todd Masters handled the physical creature effects with Adams regular Trey Lindsey doing the digital/stop-motion honors, a synergistic collaboration that results in a good supply of jumpy and gross-out moments.
John Adams was responsible for both the heavy-metal score (calling back to HELLBENDER) and the editing that sometimes matches it beat for staccato beat, granting the movie a verve that powers it from the first scene to the last. It may be just a coincidence that “Hell Hole” was also the title of a song in THIS IS SPINAL TAP, but this movie, while played straight and not as a spoof, possesses the same kind of gonzo spark. It’ll more than satisfy the Adamses’ growing fan base while offering something divertingly different for those seeking a tentacled-terror fix.
