Hellbender premiered at the Fantastia Intl. Film Festival, and will stream on Shudder in early 2022.
From Carrie and The Craft to Ginger Snaps and Jennifer’s Body, coming-of-age horror has a rich tradition of turning girls into mesmerizing monsters. We might shriek at their vicious impulses, but amid their tales of teen angst, changing bodies, and craving boys, blood, and popularity, we see an unnerving reflection of our own stories. Making its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, Hellbender is a ruthlessly witchy offering that walks in these footsteps while carving a homespun path of its own.
Hellbender is the latest feature from the Adams family, a mother-father-daughter(s) team that’s been making movies in truly indie fashion since 2013’s Rumble Strips. They are the cast and crew of their works. For the previous films, mother Toby Poser and father John Adams shared writing and directing duties, while daughter Zelda Adams co-starred alongside them. In 2019, they broke through with the festival favorite The Deeper You Dig, a lean and mean ghost story now available on Shudder. Little wonder, then, that Shudder has already acquired this ambitious follow-up, which bumps Zelda up to co-writer/co-director for a story about a girl gone wild as hell.
Shot on location in the Catskill Mountains, Hellbender centers on a mother-daughter duo who lives simply and happily, deep in the woods. Homeschooled Izzy (Zelda Adams) is an obedient girl, who eats a foraged dinner of twigs and berries without complaint and relishes rocking out at home with her mother (Toby Poser) in their titular band. However, as Izzy grows, she begins to itch for the wider world that her mother forbids. Then, a lost hiker (John Adams) sparks a ravenous curiosity in Izzy that urges her to explore not only the lands beyond their property line, but also a family heritage full of dark secrets and seductive power.
Like the heroines of horror who have come before her, Izzy walks a dark path with a mix of apprehension and exhilaration. The Adams family reflects this intoxicating rush of emotions with a cool but saturated color palette that makes the green of the woods almost violently bright against the dark tree trunks and splashes of blood. The cinematography balances wide shots underscoring isolation with close-ups that relish in little details of her discoveries, like a shiny pair of pink barrettes, a wriggling worm, and a hand splitting open to eject a magical key. The songs of Hellbender (written and performed by the whole family, including Zelda’s sister Lulu Adams) provide much of the soundtrack, expressing Izzy’s emotions with a thrillingly sneering ‘90s girl rock vibe. In the edit, slow motion and digital punch-ins are employed to punch up the excitement of an elicit hangout that might seem tame to others, but is life-changing for Izzy. Regrettably, these editing tricks feel a bit amateurish in execution, as do a few of the practical effects. Still, some less-than-seamless stop motion here and haphazard effects there don’t detract much from what the Adams built together.
More than a coming-of-age story, Hellbender is a mother-daughter drama that achieves a balance between both sides. While Izzy understandably searches for friends, identity, and meaning, the nightmare for her mother is not just the fear of losing her little girl to the independence of adulthood, but also being powerless to prevent Izzy from making the same mistakes she did in her impetuous youth. John Adams’ sound design gives voice to her growing worries through eerie backwards whispers and a score that sounds like violins being played by lead pipes. Most bombastically, this mother is tormented by clamorous visions of doom, exploding with surreal imagery and giallo-reminiscent bursts of color and sound that intrigue and unnerve.
Zelda shoulders her arc impressively, transforming before our eyes from a timid girl to a merciless maneater. (She showed a similar flair for spooky spectacle as the adolescent poltergeist of The Deeper You Dig.) As for Poser, she has an easy screen presence that translates their real-life bond into an enchantment of its own. At points, this is simply a hangout movie, luxuriating in the boundary-breaking pleasures of jamming with your mom or popping psychedelic maggots. Such scenes ground the strange in something familiar and sacred, the cozy and chaotic bond of parent and child. So even as we might root for Izzy to go full baddie — and give us a catastrophe-rich climax — we also hope for this bond to be preserved. This taut tension makes for a finale that, though simple in its construction, proves thrilling and haunting.
