HELLBENDER (2021)

Studio:      Shudder
Director:    Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, John Adams
Writer:      Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, John Adams
Producer:  Toby Poser
Stars:     Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, Lulu Adams, John Adams, Judy Rosen, Rinzin Thonden, Khenzom, Shawn Wilson, Rob Figueroa

Review Score:

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Summary:

A sheltered teenager who lives on a mountain with her mother discovers she has a dark heritage connected to witchcraft.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Sheltered teenager Izzy lives in a mountainside home in a remote forest where she and her mother, who secretly practices nature-based witchcraft using a distinct occult symbol, live off the land. Having been told she has a rare immune system disorder, Izzy avoids contact with the outside world.

Before making a supply run in town, Mother asks Izzy if she needs anything. Izzy requests drumsticks for the rock music she makes with her mother in their two-person band H6llb6nd6r.

Izzy meets a lost hiker in the woods. Izzy explains that she cannot approach the man due to her supposed sickness. The hiker says he has a niece named Amber who is Izzy’s age and lives nearby. Curious about the unusual occult symbol he found in the forest, the man tries showing Izzy a picture he took of it on his phone. Having used a spell to spy on her daughter, Mother interrupts. After sending Izzy home, Mother casts another spell that turns the hiker into dust.

While walking in the woods alone, Izzy comes across another house. Amber invites Izzy to join her in the swimming pool. Although hesitant due to the disease she believes she has, Izzy becomes enamored with Amber and the two girls become fast friends. Izzy secretly pockets two of Amber’s barrettes. Amber reveals she actually lives a mile away, but she sneaks into this yard to use its pool. Amber invites Izzy to return the next day when two of her friends will also be there.

Mother puts her palm on the occult symbol on a locked door in the house. A key magically appears from her hand. Inside the room of witchcraft paraphernalia and family mementos, mother places her hand on an old book. Mother experiences disturbing visions of Izzy screaming.

During their next band practice, Izzy tells her mother she wants to play in public. Mother tells Izzy she cannot be around other people ever.

Izzy returns to the pool the next day and meets Amber’s friends AJ and Ingrid. The four teens do tequila shots. Izzy is forced to drink from a cup containing a live earthworm. After swallowing the worm, Izzy screams and enters a trance.

The real pool owner returns home and chases everyone off his property. After fleeing into the forest, Izzy suddenly tries to strangle Amber. Shocked and upset, Amber tells Izzy to never come near her again.

The angry homeowner catches up to Izzy. Izzy secretly kills the man and consumes his flesh.

When Izzy returns home, she tells her mother that she was with friends and ate a worm. Concerned, Mother immediately asks if Izzy’s friends are okay. Izzy realizes she isn’t sick. Mother explains Izzy is actually dangerous. Mother tells Izzy she will help her understand what is happening. Izzy suspects Mother had something to do with the disappearance of Amber’s uncle.

Izzy puts her hand on the secret door’s symbol. Another key magically appears from her hand. Inside the room, Izzy places her palm on the book and experiences frightful visions.

In a dreamscape, Izzy asks her mother why the worm made her act crazy. Mother explains it wasn’t the worm that affected Izzy, but rather the fear of death inside the worm like all living things have. Izzy asks what would happen if they ate people. Mother responds that Izzy would experience immense power. In a later hallucination, Izzy imagines eating a human finger.

While hiking together, Mother apologizes for keeping the truth from Izzy, but says it was only to keep her safe because the door she opened can be difficult to close. Mother offers to help Izzy control her power, although she insists Izzy still cannot leave the mountain. Mother confirms that she inherited these abilities from her own mother too.

Izzy and Mother have a hallucinogenic experience when they eat a woollybear together. Mother teaches Izzy more magic while also testing the extent of Izzy’s unique abilities.

A full year passes. While Mother makes a trip into town, Izzy uses the book and experiences a vision of a burning witch. Izzy also uses the seeing spell to secretly spy on Amber.

On another hike together, Mother and Izzy find multiple animal carcasses whose skeletons were picked clean. The bones fascinate Izzy while Mother wonders what caused the killings.

Mother explains that they are called “hellbenders” because their ancestors craved fear of their power. People said they had turned their backs on Heaven and bent towards Hell. However, Mother challenges if Izzy would really want a similar life of being soulless and unloved. Mother teaches Izzy more magic.

A forest ranger interrupts Izzy and Mother. The ranger asks if either woman knows anything about the hiker who disappeared or the homeowner who was seemingly mauled by a wild animal the year before. Izzy and Mother claim to know nothing.

By winter, Mother’s suspicions grow after she discovers more animal carcasses. Mother tries using the seeing spell to spy on Izzy, but the magic doesn’t work.

Izzy and Mother have another hallucinogenic experience after eating maggots that fed on a dead deer. While Mother is delirious, Izzy asks about her grandmother who taught Mother magic. Mother recalls that Izzy’s grandmother was a monster who ate numerous villagers, including children. The guilt caused Izzy’s grandmother to sew her own mouth shut. A flashback shows that Mother, who reveals she is 147 years old, tried to hang Izzy’s grandmother along with other townspeople. Ultimately, the only way she could be killed was by Mother consuming her.

Izzy tracks down Amber in town. The two girls make amends, but Amber becomes weirded out again when Izzy confesses to stealing Amber’s barrettes. Amber storms off while Izzy grows angry.

Mother recovers from her stupor the next day. She finds the door to the secret room unlocked and several occult items missing. When she subsequently locates the stolen book in Izzy’s room, a vision shows Mother that Izzy violently killed the angry homeowner. Izzy and Mother confront each other inside another dreamscape. Mother becomes horrified upon seeing her daughter feasting on Amber, who is torn in two but still alive.

After exiting the vision, Mother finds a hole that Izzy magically created in the cellar. Mother follows the narrow tunnel and comes across Amber held captive and begging to be saved. Curiosity compels Mother to taste Amber’s blood. Mother realizes her daughter turned evil.

Mother confronts Izzy and says she is going to save Amber so she can save Izzy. Izzy challenges Mother’s beliefs. Mother contends that she raised Izzy to be a good person. Izzy counters that she saw the book, blood, and butchered babies and knows the truth about their sinister heritage.

Izzy coaxes Mother into revealing a flash of her true hellbender form. Izzy then terrorizes her paralyzed mother by showing her own monstrous mutation. Frightened, Mother pleads that she isn’t ready to die. Izzy laughs that she won’t eat her mother because she doesn’t want to birth a hellbender of her own.

With their dynamic now reversed, Izzy says she is going into town and asks Mother if she needs anything. Mother requests bass strings.

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Review:

It would appear I need to pay closer attention to film festival program guides when I’m thumbing through them to compile a list of what I want to see. I completely missed “Hellbender” on my first pass through Fantasia’s 2021 lineup. Had I noticed that it came from the same filmmaking family that produced “The Deeper You Dig” in 2019, “Hellbender” might have qualified for every single entry on my list of ‘Five Films to Follow at Fantasia 2021.’ No joke, I legitimately let out a little dropped-jaw gasp when I saw that Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, and John Adams made another movie, and I’m someone who nearly never exhibits outward excitement for something as routine as a film.

If you don’t know why a new release from this Adams Family would be a reason to get riled up, you’re lucky. That means you might not be familiar with “The Deeper You Dig” (review here), and you have a discovery ahead of you that’s anything other than a chore for appreciators of microbudget thrillers akin to Mike Flanagan’s “Absentia” (review here). From its disquietly unsettling atmosphere to its unusually haunting fiction, “The Deeper You Dig” is an outstanding example of homegrown moviemaking: the kind of “Little Engine That Could” indie that’s literally one in a thousand, maybe two or three thousand considering how many “Amityville Hot Tub” and “Ouija Prison Shark” movies spill amateur oil into the DTV stream on a daily basis.

Perhaps the best way to describe what mom, dad, and daughter deliver with “The Deeper You Dig” and now “Hellbender” is “rural folk horror.” It’s not exactly “pagan witches in the woods” as far as the feel goes, but close to it. Picture a place and a family that’s modern, yet they exist on a dreamy fringe just outside of suburbia where grey clouds lightly drizzle dread through occult undertones. This is where documentarians go to make murderers and find Tiger Kings, except these settings suggest something supernatural that’s also subtly sinister.

As with their previous movie, only three people do most of the major duties on “Hellbender,” including writing, editing, operating the camera, and even supplying all of the songs on the soundtrack. Trust me though. As was also the case with “The Deeper You Dig,” this is not your usual backyard affair stitched together on a whim by family and friends figuring it out as they go along. The story is painstakingly polished down to every last deliberate drop of dialogue. Minimalist designs wring every ounce of copper from the production budget’s pennies. Average folks with no professional acting experience fill in as extras, yet no one wears that “deer in the headlights” smirk that says they know they’re playing pretend in a movie. And the metal music made by Toby Poser and Zelda Adams is authentically ear-pleasing and contextually meaningful, not some slapdash garage rock tacked on as a favor for a buddy’s struggling bar band. Besides, how can anyone not be immediately endeared to a mother-daughter duo going all out with Annie Lennox makeup for band rehearsal even though they’re only playing for each other?

Endearing is a quality this family has both behind and in front of the camera. Zelda Adams plays Izzy, a sheltered teenager who lives in a remote mountainside home with her mother, played by Toby Poser. Izzy is home-schooled. Mother also put it in Izzy’s mind that she has a disease which prevents her from socializing with other people. That’s a lie of course, although Mother’s motivation for telling it is rooted in truth.

Their lineage endows these two women with arcane abilities derived from flora, fauna, insects, and animals. It also makes them dangerous, and Mother just wants to protect Izzy from being seduced by the dark side of their heritage. As it is with teenagers though, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stop Izzy from evolving into the person she is anxious to become.

That summary probably sounds like every other predictably overbearing mother and secretly-powerful child scenario we’ve seen recycled in cinema for decades. But Mother is no Margaret White and Izzy isn’t exactly Carrie either.

For one thing, Izzy isn’t pitiable. She’s incredibly likable. Even though she’s shuttered away with mom as her only friend, she seems satisfied with her limited lifestyle. Eventually Izzy meets Amber, a mildly mischievous extrovert who is also the perfect catalyst for Izzy’s curiosity. An earnest smile forms on Izzy’s face when she excitedly speaks about hiking, artwork, and her passion for playing the drums. Amber’s comparative exoticness stokes a flame of wanderlust in Izzy. Yet while she may wonder what else exists beyond the woods, Izzy also appears content with what she has, and her wholesomeness sets a sympathetic stage for the switch that’s about to come.

“Hellbender” has a mature take on witchcraft. Spells and rituals play a role, but rarely do we see occultism in a horror film emphasize nature this strongly while still feeling vaguely wicked and unsafe. Based on earth, worms, trees, and some blood, this is “vegan” witchcraft for lack of a better term. Darkness still colors the creepiness. There are peculiar symbols and wild concepts like secret keys materializing from slits in the palm of a hand. Just think magick with a k. We’re a long way from boiling cauldrons and broomstick boogedy here.

With even more macabre moodiness and emotionally affecting drama, the Adams Family ups the ante it put into the kitty with “The Deeper You Dig.” Flaws are mostly minor. “Hellbender” mixes in quite a few visual effects, and some of them show the rawness of being built from software that isn’t exactly top shelf. There’s also a long stretch right after the midpoint where eeriness evaporates so a second stage of exposition can get Izzy where she needs to go for the finale. Her relationship with Mother grows surprisingly sweeter during this stretch, but this plateau alters the ambiance for a while, although it’s the only dip that drags.

“Hellbender” tells an unusual coming-of-age tale about a teenager breaking through a parent’s boundaries in a way that’s tragic as well as terrifying because of its realistic approach to conception and execution. Truly, this is self-contained DTV horror at its finest, and that’s because of the rich sincerity in scripting, staging, and performances that eclipse any white spots created by low resources.

I’d say I can’t wait for Hollywood to come calling like it did for Mike Flanagan and give Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, and John Adams a bigger, broader palette to paint from. Selfishly however, I’d rather see them continue to make small-scale projects on their own terms, uncorrupted by outside influences or agendas. It’s only been two movies, but right now, there isn’t anyone doing deeper, equally intriguing work on a consistent basis in the DIY horror space than this remarkably impressive trio.

Review Score: 80

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