31 Days of Halloween: Hell Hole

2024,  John Adams, Toby Poser (Hellbender) -- download

We watched a previous film by this family of film makers called Hellbender back in the 2022 year of this series. They have a bit of a name made for themselves in the horror film festival circuit, but we know what I generally think of the horror fandom crowd (less of the crowd, more of what excites them). I could have been one of that fandom, some would probably label me as such -- I have a "horror movie" seasonal series and I did revel in both FantAsia and Toronto After Dark film festivals and attended a few years of TIFF Midnight Madness. But I could never commit. This is my way of saying, after this flick, I can say I don't really care for this family's films. They will not be added to future rosters.

Kent, are the posts you did as a guest-reviewer for After Dark still online somewhere?

American Frackers are in Serbia but halted while some local ecologists look to see if the fracking will damage the ecology of local pika's. Note, the pika is not found in Serbia. Also, the only road into the camp, which is situated on the ruins of some Soviet-era installation, has washed out.

Even with the delay, head fracker Emily (Toby Poser, What We Find on the Road) starts things off by drilling a hole. I guess the low budget of the movie, as long as you can get past the stilted acting, shows itself here, as this is more a piece of machinery used by landscapers than heavy industrial work. No matter, it drills into something bloody. But don't pay attention to that, because the movie quickly forgets that happened so it can focus on the weird cocoon found while digging a garbage trench. And inside the cocoon is a living man. Note, there was a brief preamble showing two men from 19th century France having become lost in Serbia, and were attacked by... something that exploded out of a horse. This guy in the hole is one of them. He doesn't show his hundreds of years.

Nobody knows why this guy was in this weird sack cocoon thing and nobody speaks French well, but eventually they figure out he wants them to kill him, and makes weird gestures that something is in him. Everyone argues about what they should do with him. Kill him! Protect him! Sure, they found him in a hole, and that's weird, but... kill him? Seems a little extreme for even Serbian roughnecks.

Everyone argues about everything. Everyone stands around in half circles and discusses everything contentiously. So... much... standing around in half circles!! Normally a comment like that would lead you to believe this was going to be a cerebral horror movie full of dialogue. But nope, the debate is barely conversational, just angry utterances, and even when they have the scientists do science chatter, its barely above high school level banter. The rest of the movie is either showing they spent their budget on some decent practical blood & gore effects, a painfully rubber monster and some terrible CG.

For a family that is touted as being so deep in the no-budget horror movie making, once given some budget they seem to not be able to rise above a sense of Asylum (my gauge for terrible movie making) level film making. At least Hellbender had some flair and thought to it, but this is just ... tiring. Nothing ever comes of the monster, despite the endless commentary on octopus biology. Depictions of the monster are unnecessarily juvenile and scatological, and then they just explode most of the miners and then rush head long to the "only the sympathetic characters escape" ending with the requisite... but did they escape?!?!

Terrible movie.