I respect any indie filmmakers who have a consistent output and a brand of their own. In the horror space especially, this is part of the fun. Osgood Perkins, for example, has recently proven his own unique take on scary movies can be successful and still stay true to his vision. Similarly, I have the utmost respect for the horror-making consortium known as The Adams Family and their continual turnout of movies. I must confess, however, the movies they make haven’t really done much for me. Their latest, Hell Hole, which I saw at Fantasia International Film Festival 2024, is the one I’ve liked the best, which is something I suppose.
The Adams Family consist of father John Adams, mother Toby Poser, and daughters Lulu Adams and Zelda Adams. All or most of them write, direct, and appear in all of their films. They are undoubtedly talented, and prolific of late. Their previous horror outings have been 2019’s The Deeper You Dig, 2021’s Hellbender, and 2023’s Where the Devil Roams. All of those films had a certain visual eeriness and a muted tone. Where they usually lose me is in the story, which is often so sparse you could drive Rhode Island through it. Hell Hole has more of a story, and a lot more dialogue, which helps to a degree. But it’s still missing something.
The film follows an American-led fracking team in Eastern Europe who uncover strange parasitic caephelopedic creatures underground. More specifically, they find a French soldier from the Napoleonic Wars, perfectly preserved and carrying one of these creatures within him. Like a plague or a virus, the tentacled terror jumps from host to host as the crewmembers and their environmental envoys try to figure out what to do about it.
And that’s it, that’s the whole story. It’s not dissimilar to any number of alien movies. Specifically, Alien. This one deals more in the vein of discussing whether ancient creatures like this deserve to live, even if it means the host body dies in the process. It’s essentially, what if the facehuggers took a lot longer to gestate the alien, and they did it from inside? We get some gruesome body explosions and the creature design itself is grotty, but largely that’s what Hell Hole is.
Poser plays Em, the head of the outfit, who has the best head on her shoulders and knows enough to let the local workers deal with troubles their own way rather than try to assert more dominance. John Adams plays John, one of the other Americans, and Max Portman plays Em’s nephew, a young cook with a crush on Sofija (Olivera Perunicic), one of the two scientists. The cast are all quite good, especially considering half of them are speaking their first language.
But the simplicity here is sort of the problem. The plot mechanics are fine, the actors are good, and the creature itself is effective enough. But so much of the movie is just idle banter while standing around waiting for things to happen. I won’t say it’s boring, and like I said, it ended up being the most I’ve liked one of the Adams Family’s movies. It just doesn’t do much with what it’s working with to get it over the hump. The movie isn’t scary or even particularly exciting. It’s shot more like a comedy than a horror movie but doesn’t have the jokes.
I hope the Adams Family make movies forever, and I hope I eventually like even one of them.
Hell Hole is coming to Shudder on August 23. Maybe you’ll find more to like about it than I did.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.