The Adams Family—a group of filmmakers led by father John Adams, mother Toby Poser, and daughter Lulu Adams—are some of the most fascinating horror filmmakers on the scene. Get thee to a streaming service and watch “The Deeper You Dig” as soon as possible—it’s one of the best horror films of the decade so far—and then chase that with their clever, twisted “Hellbender.” These are deeply personal genre films, movies that hum with atmosphere and dread. Their latest is kind of a departure for John and Toby—Lulu gets writing credit but doesn’t appear this time—in that it’s their first filmed on location out of the country (in Serbia) and easily contains their biggest budget. Working with a bigger production company on a film that feels more like anyone could have made it than their previous works drains “Hell Hole” lacks some of the DIY charm of the other flicks by Adams and Poser. Comparatively, it’s kind of a disappointment, despite having some undeniable positives that should make it an easy watch for horror heads.
“Hell Hole” was obviously inspired by the master John Carpenter, owing a great deal to his version of “The Thing”—a remote outpost overtaken by a monster that can look like an ordinary person—and movies he made about people essentially stumbling into portals to Hell in films like “Prince of Darkness” and “In the Mouth of Madness.” The hapless souls in this one are a team (led by Poser’s Emily) that’s fracking in a remote corner of Serbia when they drill into, well, something impossible. They find a body in a sort of cocoon of a centuries-old soldier, and he’s still alive. While they discuss what to do with this break in reality, they notice something even stranger about the Frenchman in that there appears to be something that occasionally peeks out of his nose or ear. Before you can say “burn it with fire,” the monster that was inhabiting the poor soul has jumped ship to John (Adams) and set out to wreak more havoc.
The main twist of the body possession tale here is a sort of male pregnancy narrative in that the creature is inhabiting men as a host for growth. Where’s mom? And what happens when it comes to term? The Adams Family has a lot of fun with some of their most out-there ideas, such as when the creature in a human host realizes it’s under threat and basically just flees by turning its current home into a pile of bloody goo. “Hell Hole” is a marvelously goopy movie with a whole lot of slimy red stuff and tentacles slicing through the air. It’s also a consistently funny movie, playing almost more like dark comedy than the foreboding work the family has made in the past.
On that note, I’m happy to see Adams and Poser kind of spreading their wings and trying something different here, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that this one doesn’t have the same teeth as their best films. It’s more of a lark. Sure, there’s some commentary about how f-ing with Mother Nature will eventually lead to carnage, but it’s very loosely sketched, and the characters have too few traits to be actually memorable. And, yes, it’s a bit clever that Emily used to be a hippie, and there’s some decent character work by Olivera Perunicic, but the people here are naturally forced to cede interest to the enemy they face, giving the whole thing a bit of shallowness that even great body horror avoids. It’s sporadically fun enough, but just not that deep a cinematic hole.
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