The parasitic creature at the center of The Adams Family’s Hell Hole (comprising John Adams and Toby Poser as directors/co-writers/stars, with daughter Lulu joining them on screenwriting duos while Zelda sits this one out) isn’t messing around. The second it seems its host is being threatened, it simply explodes its way out to find a new one. This means a lot of blood and gore and a couple effective jump scares––you never know how much of a threat is too much. Sometimes the beast simply wiggles a tentacle or two out of its victim’s orifices. Sometimes it stages a jail break. The only consistency is that it will take over the next, nearest male human in the hopes of finally reaching maturity.
How long will that take? Considering the movie opens in the 19th century with remnants of Napoleon’s army before reaching the present-day Serbian fracking site Emily (Poser) and John (Adams) have agreed to drill, your guess is as good as mine. If two hundred years wasn’t enough, how many is? And who would want to find out? Definitely not the two Americans and their nepo-baby cook (Maximum Portman’s Teddy) who’s along for the ride. Not the Serbian crew, either. The only ones who might see this horror show as an opportunity rather than a death sentence are the environmentalists forced upon Emily to sign-off on the job. They’ve already made it clear an endangered species of rabbit trumps oil. Why wouldn’t an undocumented monster, too?
The film’s ambitions aren’t solely on that wavelength, though. Yes, Nikola (Aleksandar Trmčić) and Sofija (Olivera Peruničić) are excitable scientists who would give anything to be at the forefront of a discovery like this, but there’s more to it than conservation. As a character explains, one cannot hate frackers for drilling holes into the earth and destroying Mother Nature yet allow a parasite to figuratively drill holes into its human host to strip it of its own natural resources. It might be a reductive comparison, but it is apt enough to both give pause and create an even better metaphor via incubation and pregnancy. Because the argument insofar as wanting to keep the specimen alive inside an unwilling host perfectly parallels the ongoing abortion issue.
Looking to create a twist, however, The Adams Family have chosen a real-life creature as the basis of their monster––one that uses its males as incubators. Suddenly it’s men who have people demanding they keep this unwanted guest inside them. It’s men who are desperate to stop it from growing because they know that it reaching full-term will mean their own death. Thus you have Nikola espousing anecdotal observations of octopus mothers letting themselves starve to death to protect their children’s germination to guilt the others into believing that the sacrifice is a noble one while everyone else tries to shut him up by declaring they deserve to live too. That they deserve to live more.
It’s a fantastic layer of subtext that gives what is ultimately a low-budget creature feature––albeit much more polished than you’re used to from The Adams Family; this is the first time they’ve been afforded a team and resources that go beyond themselves, including a DP, location shoot, and memorable creature effects––a lot more merit beyond cheap thrills. You must stick with it for a bit to get there, though, as the opening third skews towards smug American exceptionalism for laughs (Emily and especially John are quick to let the Serbians know they could give a crap about their culture or desires beyond capitalistic gains) than politicized horror via bodily autonomy. The shift is a stark contrast and worth the wait.
So too is the monster. Comparisons to The Thing are obvious as it skitters across the ground jumping host to host, but the hosts still being alive and in control adds a nice wrinkle. It takes the wheel if the person tries committing suicide, but it doesn’t drive the bus beyond that and full-scale evacuation. This supplies a level of human fallibility and fear that’s simply not projected through the eyes and actions of witnesses. Some victims are so caught in denial that they’ll keep its presence a secret. Others are so afraid of what it might do upon leaving that they want nothing more than to tell everyone in hopes one will kill him and perhaps it in the process.
And there are those characters who refuse to believe (until they see it for themselves). You have the politics of bureaucracy in play as well. Would Emily love to take charge and dictate what happens? Sure. It’s easier said than done when you’re outnumbered in a foreign country against people with weapons. All you can do is try and steer them in the correct direction. To hint at the truth in a way that they might heed without fully dismissing everything as a fantastical impossibility. The result is a high body count––it cannot be helped. Maybe it’s a bit nihilistic on paper, but it’s also very authentic in showing how mankind doesn’t want to accept the worst until it must. Unfortunately, that’s always too late.
As someone with a mixed reaction to The Adams Family’s work (I enjoyed Hellbender, but found the rest to be fine), I was leaning towards the latter with Hell Hole. The more I’ve sat with it, though, and really dove into its themes, I’ve found it grabbed me. There are little faults inherent to the micro-budget constraints of “troupe” work, but you can never fault the passion or effort. It’s nice to see them get a little more support to scale things up in monster and kills, especially as they don’t let it take away from usual sensibilities. It remains an Adams Family film. They just finally got the means to go bigger.
Hell Hole had its world premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival and begins streaming via Shudder on August 23.