This review was made possible by an advance screener of Hell Hole. Hell Hole premieres on Shudder on Friday, August 23rd.

Oh, it’s a new Shudder movie, and everyone knows those and I go way back! Hell Hole is a new movie from The Adams Family movie-making family (Toby Poser and John Adams), and it tells the tale of a parasitic monster hosting itself in various bodies as it waits to be ready to thrive on its own.

The movie starts off in the Napoleonic era in what would become modern-day Serbia. Two lost soldiers are given a horse by a stranger wanderer. When the prepare the slaughter the gift to feed themselves and their platoon, a creature bursts forth and attack them!

That bombastic opening then takes us to the modern day in the same area of the world, where an American fracking team is digging up the earth. They are accompanied by two conservationists there to protect any indigenous species. The team unearths one of the soldiers from the opening scene of the movie, and they find he is somehow still alive these centuries later. Not only is he alive, but he is inflicted with some kind of creature, whose tentacles they occasionally see poking out of the man-out-of-time’s orifices. 

From there, the drillers and the conservationists argue over what to do with the man and how to handle their predicament. But the strange, parasitic behavior is just starting. 

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The characters and the acting are on point in this effort. Frustratingly, not all of the actors are listed on IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes, so I’m having a hard time finding the names of everyone to whom I want to give credit. Specifically the actor behind the prominent role of Nikolai, one of the environmentalists checking on the dig site and who becomes protective of the parasitic monster they find. His line delivery and facial expressions were tremendous, and he was my favorite character of the flick.

Aside from him, Poser is a star as Emily, essentially the lead character of the movie, as she is in charge of the dig and finds herself caught between everyone else as she tries to maintain sanity at the site and make sure cooler (and safer) heads prevail. Oilvera Perunicic as Sofija is also of note here; she plays a character initially sympathetic to Nikolai’s cause, but she eventually sees the threat for what it is and sides with others in the camp. Like Nikolai, she is more naive earlier on, and her attitude and expressions are a joy to see.

Honestly, everyone here excels in their role, and the writing of the characters makes them mostly realistic (you could argue that no one would behave like Nikolai does, but he’s so much fun I can’t even focus on that complaint). Excellent work across the board by the cast.

+ The settings, sound, lighting… all of the technical aspects of the movie are well done and very professional. A lot of lower budget independent flicks look like… well, like lower budget independent films. But Hell Hole has a higher quality sheen to it and is very well made.

In addition, the score/soundtrack is great. When the movie has its crazier moments–more on those in a second–the score blasts you with some heart-thumping music. It’s really intense and a great musical choice. 

– After the opening scene, the film seems to promise an absolutely wild ride of gore and guts and zany action. To be fair, it definitely delivers on the gore and guts. But after that cold open, the movies slows way down, and the frantic quasi-comedy pace I thought I could expect never materializes.

Instead, it focuses on a humanistic tale and a lot of talking and deciding what should be done about the problem. Which is fine; there are absolutely movies where that should be the plot and what the film does. But I can’t help but say that after the crazy ending to the movie’s first moments, I was expecting a non-stop ride of bombast and excitement.

I should have known when I realized this movie was by the same family behind the much more subdued The Deeper You Dig to not necessarily expect the wildest flick I have ever seen, but still… I think there was a better movie hiding inside this one. Hell, that’s even thematic for it!

– There are a few directorial choices that felt rather gimmicky to me and not necessarily in-theme for what was going on. More like the family behind the camera just thought of something to do, and they indiscriminately did it. 

There are scene transitions accompanied by a pounding rock beat, and the camera kind of rhythmically quick zooms in-and-out with the pulsation of the music. It’s a weird choice (no knock on the score choices in these scenes, which was again quite good), and it doesn’t really do anything besides punctuate the soundtrack. If you are going to do something that is kind of a shtick like that, I’d rather feel like it’s being done in service to what we are seeing or feeling than just because it looks cool. I got the sense of the latter behind these choices. 

OVERALL

Hell Hole could have benefitted from going one of two ways, because the mood was inconsistent and confusing. Either to have reshot the wilder scenes and made them more low-key or horrifying. Or to have let the rest of the movie been a little less dialogue-driven and to have gone nuts with the body horror and humorous potential of it all. As it is, I kept waiting for a full-on tone shift that never came to be. Aside from that, everything here is fine; I just felt like I was promised a more fun time than what the last hour actually delivered. 

2 Out of 5