Studio: Shudder
Director: Toby Poser, John Adams
Writer: Lulu Adams, John Adams, Toby Poser
Producer: Justin Martell, Matt Manjourides, Milos Dukelic
Stars: Toby Poser, John Adams, Max Portman, Anders Hove, Marko Filipovic, Olivera Perunicic, Aleksandar Trmcic, Petar Arsic, Bruno Veljanovski
Review Score:
Summary:
A fracking team drilling in Serbia digs up an ancient organism whose parasitic properties cause a wave of gruesome deaths.
Review:
I might have spoken too soon when I speculated "Where the Devil Roams" (review here) must be a disorienting, or possibly disappointing, experience for Tubi viewers coming into an Adams Family film for the first time. "Hell Hole" gives that movie a real run for its money in erecting obstacles for casual horror fans who mistakenly presume they're about to bite into a typical monster movie. In addition to bearing the signature style of the Adams Family's DIY aesthetic, "Hell Hole" features four spoken languages, a foreign filming location, and dialogue-dominated scenes that don't always advance the story. Admittedly, if this were my first encounter with the Adams Family, I'd probably write off "Hell Hole" as an underwhelming indie unlikely to instill a strong desire to see where they go next.
Taking "Hell Hole" as another step, even one that stubs its toe, in expanding their filmography, however, the movie becomes more fascinating as insight into the family's creative advancement. While abstract subtext and experimentation made "Where the Devil Roams" their most cryptic effort to date, "Hell Hole" overcorrects in the opposite direction by being their most openly accessible fright film. Metaphors exist, specifically an obvious one about how alpha males would handle the body horror of pregnancy. (Spoiler: Poorly.) But there are also more easily approachable elements in the human interactions, goopy gore, and plot progression that don't hinge on speculative interpretations of artistic imagery.
Taking a break from the Catskill Mountain region that's been home to their other endeavors, "Hell Hole" sees the Adams Family setting up shop with a cast and crew in Serbia. In 1814, a stranded platoon of Napoleon's soldiers found themselves there on the brink of starvation. When a strange Roma woman gifted their captain with a horse, the soldiers prepared to use it for food. Yet when they tried cutting into the animal, a tentacled creature burst from its body and attacked everyone.
In 2022, Emily runs a fracking operation on the same site with fellow American John, her nephew Teddy, a pair of conservation scientists, and a team of local workers. Impossibly, their dig uncovers one of those French soldiers, who somehow survived in a cocoon underground for 200 years.
It doesn't take long for the two people wearing glasses to find the suspect responsible for the soldier's suspended animation. The same symbiotic organism that killed Napoleon's men in 1814 has been incubating inside this man's body ever since. Its gestation cycle isn't complete, which means it's determined to tear its tentacles through one host to the next as an aberrance to alter natural evolution.
The fact that the fiction can be summarized succinctly, linearly, and in terms familiar to filmgoers who've been through parasitic possessions on screen before already earns "Hell Hole" its first qualification as the most user-friendly movie the Adams Family has made. The film also illustrates the family's fearlessness to venture out of their comfort zones by testing new techniques.
While the movie maintains messages about motherhood, directors/stars/spouses John Adams and Toby Poser aren't joined by daughter Zelda Adams either in front of or behind the camera this time around, which I believe may be a first for their features. Instead, Poser's character Emily gets a nephew, and Adams doesn't play her husband. Meanwhile, the couple's other daughter, Lulu Adams, raises her profile all the way up to the script's co-writer in another first for the family.
They're not done shaking up their dynamic just yet. "Hell Hole" also forgoes a song-laden soundtrack from H6llb6nd6r, the Toby Poser and Zelda Adams-fronted band whose recordings played in their previous two films. John Adams provides this score all alone, although he retains the percussive metal sound that's been pounding underneath their visuals for some time now.
Fans who've faithfully followed the Adams Family can have their own debates over what effect these swaps in story, audio, and featured family members have in changing the shape of "Hell Hole" for better or for worse. It's exciting to see their wings spread further regardless, though some feathers fall into areas where there are lessons left to be learned.
In a bygone time when I worked on a corporate video for an auto plant, my partners and I shot a bunch of B-roll where oversized conveyor belts deafeningly churned and molten metal poured out of massive cauldrons like something straight out of "The Terminator." It wasn't until we reviewed the footage in the editing room that we realized, this looks incredibly cool to neophytes like us who had never seen these things before, but why would the intended audience of employees who see these sights everyday want to watch them on their cafeteria TV, too?
This anecdote came to mind whenever "Hell Hole" cut to another establishing shot of heavy machinery digging into dirt or a decrepit building looming ominously on the Serbian site. I imagined that, to eyes unaccustomed to these initially atypical images, they must have seemed remarkable. It didn't seem like the cinematographer concurrently considered what value these shots presented to average viewers who wonder, why are we cutting away to this crumbling concrete structure again?
That's the push-pull conundrum with "Hell Hole." For longstanding Adams Family fans, it's intriguing to see them deepening their bag of tricks regardless of whether or not the audience applauds. For those not clapping their hands, it's understandable to be confounded by something like sudden, gurgling bowel SFX that are just an indulgent flourish not meant to synch with onscreen actions. By my count, this evens out the Adams Family's record at two contemporary classics of homegrown horror, and two mid-road movies, which is still good enough for putting together a varied resume that's bringing them closer to the breakout hit that'll finally ensure even more people take note of their names.
Review Score: 60
Taking it as another step in expanding their filmography, the movie becomes more fascinating as insight into the Adams Family's creative advancement.