Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Toby Poser, John Adams
Starring: Toby Poser, John Adams, Max Portman, Anders Hove, Olivera Perunicic, Aleksandar Trmcic, Petar
Arsic, Bruno Veljanovski
The Adams family - Toby Poser and John Adams and their
teenage daughters Zelda Adams and Lulu Adams - became cult
faves with a series of inventive no-budget horror movies that saw the
family members occupy a variety of roles both in front of and behind the
camera. With Hell Hole they've made the leap from no-budget
to low-budget, from regional American filmmaking to an international
production shot and set in Serbia. It's also their most mainstream movie
to date, swapping the esoteric and obtuse storytelling that has become
their trademark for comedy-horror. But in doing so they've lost their
distinctive personality, leaving Hell Hole with little to
distinguish it from the many jokey and hokey monster movies that crowd the
straight to VOD market.
Zelda sits this one out (perhaps she's off at college now?), with the
remaining three collaborating on the script. John and Toby direct, and
also play John and Emily, an American couple heading a fracking operation
in the remote wilds of Serbia. The operation has been temporarily shut
down amid fears that it threatens an endangered rabbit species. Leading
this investigation is scientist Nikola (Aleksandar Trmcic) and his
eager young student Sofija (Olivera Perunicic). Expecting to find
some pesky wabbits, the crew are shocked when they uncover a Napoleonic
French soldier wrapped in a cocoon. Turns out the blighter is hosting a
deadly parasite, which spends the movie leaping from one body to the next,
leaving a mass of gooey gore in its wake.
John Carpenter's The Thing is clearly an influence, with much
bickering between drillers, scientists and roughnecks over how best to deal
with this threat. The key difference is that there's no mystery regarding
which character is currently hosting the parasite, which removes much of the
potential to generate tension from the premise.
Hell Hole does add its own unique spin to this scenario: the
parasite can only adopt male bodies as hosts. This makes the setup an
allegory for female bodily autonomy, with men finding themselves at the
mercy of others regarding what to do with the creature growing inside their
own body. But just in case we didn't pick up on that ourselves, the movie is
keen to make sure it doesn't fly over our heads with Emily frequently
mentioning the irony of the situation in on-the-nose dialogue.
The movie's feminist agenda is oddly contrasted with its attitude towards
fracking. You might expect the frackers to be the villains and the
environmental scientist the hero, but that's not the case at all. Once he
learns about the parasite, Nikola goes full mad scientist, demanding that it
be protected at all costs, even at the expense of its human hosts.
Conversely the film has nothing to say about fracking, which makes you
wonder why it was added to the plot in the first place.
When the splat finally hits the walls it's briefly fun, utilising a mix of
practical and CG effects, but the vast bulk of the film is made up of
endless scenes of characters standing around discussing what to do next. And
when I say "standing around," I mean that quite literally. The many dialogue
scenes are blocked in the most boring manner imaginable, with the actors
standing stiffly as they speak to one another in mid-shots. For some weird
reason, nobody is allowed to move while they talk, as if they were purposely
positioned under microphones with limited range.
Another major issue with Hell Hole is the lack of a definable
protagonist. Emily is ostensibly the main character, but she's a passive
presence who contributes little to the narrative. The closest we have to
sympathetic figures are Emily's nephew Teddy (Max Portman) and
Sofija, both of whom refuse to act like sociopaths like everyone else, but
they're minor characters when they should be the leads.
But perhaps the biggest problem here is how the comedy is integrated. It
only really becomes a comedy in the splatstick sequences. The rest of the
movie is played straight, with very little comic dialogue in the many talky
scenes. It's as though the movie keeps asking us to take it seriously and
then hits us with a comic sequence that completely undermines that intent.
We're left wishing the Adams clan had played to their strengths and given us
their own unique spin on the monster movie rather than trying to ape all
that's gone before.
Hell Hole is on Shudder from
August 23rd.
