Final Rating: 3.5/5
Hellbender is the 6th film released by Wonder Wheel Productions, a horror movie company run by the aptly named Adams family. The threesome includes dad, John Adams, mom, Toby Poser, and daughter, Zelda Adams who write, direct, edit, shoot, compose, act and distribute their films in a truly family affair. Eldest daughter Lulu Adams also acts in the film but in a more supporting capacity. Their latest feature is about a mother and daughter who live deep in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Izzy, the daughter played by Zelda Adams, is told she has an immunocompromised disease where if she comes in contact with other people she could get sick and die, which is why her mother, played by Toby Poser, removed her from society when she was a young child. Izzy and her mom have their own hard rock band called H6LLB6ND6R, but otherwise Izzy is left to her own devices most of the time.
Izzy eventually meets another young woman, Amber played by Lulu Adams, hanging out at a pool and they become friends despite Izzy’s poor social skills. After being egged on to eat a worm by Amber’s friends, Izzy has a meltdown and isn’t sure what caused her to go into a fit of blind rage. Her mother, knowing something is up, continues to try to shield the young girl from the truth, that they are descended from a long line of Hellbenders, a type of witch that when you consume the flesh from a live creature you absorb their fear and pain creating a hallucinogenic experience.
Slowly Izzy’s mother realizes she needs to start teaching her daughter about her powers, lest she is unable to control them and does real damage to either herself or to someone else. The more her mother tries to teach her slowly and purposely, the more Izzy feels like she is being lied to and being withheld. This all continues in a slow burn fashion until we learn that Hellbenders aren’t conceived by traditional means but instead women immaculately conceive once they have killed their own mothers, ensuring that the line will always continue. This revelation leads to an assumed natural conclusion, but one that the Adams don’t want to outright give the audience without making them squirm first.
Horror is one of the few genres of movies where micro budgets aren’t seen as a bad word, but instead as a vehicle for true originality. The point of horror is to cause dread or fear, and with clever filmmakers you don’t need a large budget or crazy special effects, just imagination and a desire to do everything yourselves. As outlined at the top, the Adams family really does it all. They compose the music that not only plays in the background, but they actively incorporated the band into the film, giving it moments of a music video like atmosphere. The film does use special effects quite frequently, but they either do them practically, like opening the film with a hanging and using creative angles, or employ CGI conservatively utilizing it sparingly or understanding the limitations.They don’t try to CGI a city or crowd, but instead quickly make their faces shape shift to have black soulless eyes, rows of razor teeth and decomposing flesh, only on screen long enough to to unnerve a viewer before going back to normal, or when the characters go on a psychedelic like trip, causing the world around them to warp and melt. When you aren’t striving for real approximations, you can get away with not having James Cameron-like graphics, and in fact it makes it look all the better.
Seventeen year old Zelda Adams has to do a lot of the heavy lifting on screen, who surely is helped and supported by her family, playing a character much like Sissy Spacek did in Carrie. Izzy is on the precipice of womanhood and is coming into her own, much like a young girl getting her period for her first time changing the way her entire body operates on an anatomical level, she changes on a metaphysical level in Hellbender. Her new powers and strength confuse and scare her, while also exciting her and Zelda Adams straddles the multilayered feelings gracefully. The mother gets to do most of her acting by showing instead of telling. We see Toby Poser struggle with how much to tell her daughter the truth and showing off her own powers as well in dealing with a nosy trespasser.
In the end everything comes together in a gross out conclusion that would sound too ridiculous to describe, but relies on some great practical effects, a disembodied scream and the only light coming from a lantern. It is the movie’s crowning achievement for being scary. The film is a delightful folk horror tale showing the power women have in society while being connected to nature as the movie slowly amps up tension to a frightful conclusion. There are moments of truly gross horror that would make the all time greats proud of this little family that can.
Hellbender can be seen exclusively on Shudder starting February 24th 2022. Special thanks to Exile PR for the advance screener.
