The Adams Family Creates Raging Body Horror in Serbian Wilderness with Hell Hole (2024)
Title: Hell Hole
First Non-Festival Release: August 23, 2024 (Digital/Streaming Platforms)
Director: John Adams, Toby Poser
Writer: John Adams, Lulu Adams, Toby Poser
Runtime: 92 Minutes
Starring: Toby Poser, John Adams, Maximum Portman
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
Deep in the Serbian wilderness, a fracking crew uncovers a curiosity when they unearth a live Frenchman when excavating a nearby field. What’s wilder, is they have reason to believe he may be from another time altogether after interrogating him further. Soon enough, a strange and deadly creature erupts from the Frenchman before taking over the body of another crewman. As it hops from body to body, it’s up to site leader Emily (Toby Poser) to stop it in its tracks before it kills the entirety of her crew.
Tonally uneven with a middling execution, Hell Hole is a creature feature that fails to find any momentum.
Getting much inspiration from John Carpenter’s The Thing, Hell Hole creeps by with its interpretation of cold, isolation horror. Not lacking the elements, Hell Hole has quite a bit going for it at its start. The fracking station serves as a unique and sufficiently isolated setting while also offering some cool set piece moments too. Disconnects between workers via profession, language, class, and intelligence allow the tension to simmer further. Even the monster itself is a win for the story, as a shapeshifting alien attacking a bunch of oil workers makes for some fun moments of commentary. Unfortunately, all these ingredients don’t mix well together in Hell Hole.
The motivation of the creature is certainly compelling, even if the universe’s rules don’t align with its modus operandi. By seeking out the bodies of men, the creature acts like something completely foreign and terrifying to most men: being pregnant and giving birth. Far from an original idea, Alien did it first, Hell Hole struggles to make the concept either interesting or scary. Due to wildly varying incubation periods, the creature can’t shed its skin suit fast enough to keep up with all the people it kills. Hopping from man to man without much thought or grace, Hell Hole reduces its big bad to a rather simple-minded creature quite quickly. The bodies barely have time to react to feel any horror, so why would the audience?
The large ensemble cast of future bodies fails at bringing their characters to life and making their situation believable. Overrun with plenty of bodies to be eviscerated by the cosmic horror running amok on their base, the fracking crew reacts with little wit or surprise. The one notable exception, of course, is Toby Poser playing the badass leader Emily, who imbues an appropriate level of grit to the film. By taking the danger seriously, Poser’s Emily moves authentically even if the weight of the film’s narrative crashes around her.
Hell Hole may not do much in the realm of creature features, but it does paint a bleak picture with its take on environmental horror. While the creature’s interactions focus on its pregnancy reversal goals, its presence shows how something dangerous can come out of the ground if you aren’t too careful about it, much like oil. It’s no secret that the creature here mirrors back the gluttony of man in its behaviors once it is back from underground. After preserving a buried body for centuries, this monster decimates a decently large operation in hours. Consuming without thought or regard, the monster takes from its environment until everything is gone, and it can move to the next place.
Far from their strongest effort, The Adams Family’s take on creature feature horror leaves a lot to be desired despite their signature style breaking through every once and awhile. A cool concept, talented filmmakers, and unique setting can only do so much for a film that fails to establish tension and tone effectively. Toby Poser’s performance and a few fun design elements aside, Hell Hole is a body horror vehicle that never quite crosses the finish line. Misfires happen. Even if Hell Hole isn’t quite the explosion it wants to be, it’s still a fine attempt at body horror.
Overall Score? 5/10
