The Adams Family’s horror credentials need no validation by anyone. And maybe they would just be flattered: It speaks volumes that as soon as the filmmaking family clan – consisting of spouses Toby Poser and John Adams and their daughters Zelda and Lulu Adams – were given a (slightly) bigger budget to work with, they decided to use it for gore. Hell Hole, the vehicle for these effects is a film in transition, blending styles and modes of working that are not quite as visionary as their other more insular features. However, with all the complex and unconventional figures that brought them into limelight anyway, Hell Hole has more personality than your run-of-the mill creature feature.
So far, Poser and the Adamses have made films with an exclusive intuitive approach evolved from DIY projects like 2019’s The Deeper You Dig! and their breakout film Hellbender in 2021. The latter got them connected with Shudder who got them on The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs which resulted in Poser and John Adams going over to Serbia to shoot Hell Hole — a movie shot by professionals under artificial lighting with a normal script for them first time ever. There are times when results of such trip seem uneven but never uninteresting.
Older sister Lulu co-wrote while Zelda, who acted alongside her in Hellbender is away at college screenplay but only Poser and John appear among other members of the family in Hell Hole. Their incorporation into the story is smart: portraying obnoxious Americans setting up a fracking site in Serbia, they offer an absurd reflection of the real-life circumstances surrounding production of Hell Hole itself . As such any tension between foreign leads versus local extras or Serbian performers appearing as scientists watching over environmental effects at this location actually becomes an advantage rather than drawback.
Emily played by Poser “smokes pot like a hippie” who went from saving the earth to stripping and polluting it after her solar-energy business failed. Her character is multi-faceted – in fact, far too multi-faceted for this type of film if I am honest. This makes Hell Hole better because Poser’s credibility as a snarky, bossy yet tender figure of authority with her ‘maternal’ vibe about everything, though Emily is child free by choice, holds the things together. And thank goodness for that, because this movie has to have something holding it down.
This monster-movie element is reminiscent of Alien and The Thing—where there are a group of blue collar workers situated at a remote location that get ambushed by an extremely aggressive creature. Then comes the gross shit: digital VFX mixed with practical gore from Todd Masters who worked on A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and Slither. From below come the drills revealing bloody chunks of stinking oily flesh. Characters burst like blenders full of tomatoes gone bad and overripe. Finally, H.R. Giger meets Basket Case when we do see the thing itself.The most bizarre occurrence in Hell Hole however happens when the team unearths a soldier from Napoleon’s army encased in blue skin where he has lived without eating or drinking for over two centuries.’
He’s up the spout without any giveaways. It all got a little fanny to me with the revolting parasite changes; in fact, she has tried to be feminist ironic but not entirely and it has gone down well: Again, as welcome as this thematic complexity is, and quite scatalogical are its incarnations.
It is followed by scenes of people being umm colonized by the thingy mixed with John Adams’ headbanging score and desaturated digital cinematography of Hell Hole giving it a vibe of ‘00s heavy metal video i.e., an apt aesthetic choice that does not necessarily go hand in hand with the complex dialogue and mature characterizations. Thus, there can be some bumpy transitions between scenes – and tones for that matter.
Poser and Adams are doing something different again here. Their next project will take them back to their home territory in the Catskills; whether they will return to Serbia for more films remains uncertain at this stage. The filmmaker has thus depicted Hell Hole as a way of showing how artists like Adam work differently from other low budget horror movies. Talented filmmakers such as these should be free to experiment. If nothing else, the results will always be interesting.
The Adams Family who are DIY filmmakers mix conventional methods with extraordinary gore in Hell Hole- a monster movie. In their follow-up to “Hellbender” (2021), directed by Toby Poser and John Adams themselves playing Americans going over to Serbia so that they can begin fracking activities there only to find disgusting things created by veteran effects artist Todd Masters. While combining bloodshed and intricate characterizing may somewhat fluctuate scene by scene, what distinguishes them from other horror film directors gives this film personality above regular low-cost creature-features.
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