Being Film #26 for Hooptober 2024
It’s rare, but sometimes the situation just calls for a low budget yet earnest splatterfest involving Lovecraftian cephalopods who get into your body and just…incubate. Then explode your body at the first sign of danger. This was one of those times, and Hell Hole, the latest feature from the filmmaking family of John Adams and Toby Poser, who brought the similarly cook Hellbender to audiences a few years ago, was the film. The TL;DR is this is fun, rocking with a nice metal soundtrack, and has LOTS of people splattering. It also weirdly has things to say about environmental concerns, body rights, and whether French people can be shot indiscriminately. I’m not so sure about that last point, but the rest is definitely there for interpretation.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Jon and Em lead a fracking crew in Serbia, with a couple of scientists tagging along to ensure the area is free of any biological life that would result in miles of paperwork. Tensions are already high with the language barriers, the pesky romance slowly brewing between Sofija, the lovely research assistant and Teddy, Em’s son who is the poet and cook for the crew. When they discover a French solider from the Nepoleanic wars STILL ALIVE and covered in a gooey substance, they begin to think maybe it’s not a good idea to go drilling here. TOO LATE, as they say in Serbia (I assume), because the ancient evil is loosed again, and it doesn’t matter if it’s impregnating the males in the group, or just using them as egg sacs, there’s little anyone is going to be able to do before slimy, beaky, tentacled entities just creep out of every orifice…
The directing team known as The Adams Family really know how to stretch their budget here, all to good fun effect. Besides writing and directing, they also star as Jon and Em, hiding up the frakking team. Adams also does all the music, which is a fun heavy metal that often punctuate scenes for some comedic effect. It might come as a surprise to viewers that despite being very much a film dedicated to splatter and goopy creature effects, the humor is often sly or character based. No overt physical gags here (unless you count the way one character suddenly explodes), just the humor that comes from a bunch of dirty, tired blue collar workers who have been in close proximity for too long.
There are big shades of other films that color the vibe the Adams are going for – The Thing looms particularly large here. But they use it as an opportunity to question thing like body autonomy and rights, something I was very much not expecting. I thought I was going to get tentacle aliens slithering in out of orifices (and I do…I DO), but I also get a frank discussion on the responsibility of science and whether someone with a life-ending alien parasite in their body has the right to choose death over letting an evil alien thing grow in their body. Who would’ve thunk, you know?
I think the trailer will give you everything you need to know about Hell Hole. It’s an enjoyable flick with some inventiveness and creativity, and now I want to go find and watch Hellbender (I hear it’s great) and continue to cheer on DIY filmmakers and see where they go next.
Cinema Dual 
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