Hell Hole is the latest addition to the Adams Family’s rapidly growing filmography (which includes The Deeper You Dig, Hellbender, and Where the Devil Roams), marking the fourth time the family has premiered a film at Montreal’s International Fantasia Film Festival. The sold-out crowd welcomed writer-directors Toby Poser and John Adams, alongside the cast and crew, to the event, which quickly turned into a celebration of DIY filmmaking.
Hell Hole is set in remote Serbia, where American business partners John and Emily are struggling to start their new fracking venture. A flooded highway has cut off their drilling resources, and a pair of environmental watchdogs keep holding them back. When the crew unearths a Napoleonic soldier, a bizarre and grisly mystery wreaks havoc throughout the camp.
Most of the film is a balancing act between screwball banter and sudden, explosive gore. A pivotal plot moment revolves around a French/English language barrier (something that had the Montreal crowd howling), and much of the humor is fueled by differences between the American bosses, the Serbian workers, and the French soldier. When violence occurs, it’s sudden, shocking and gooey, but it’s the reactions to the gore, or sometimes the lack-thereof, that really cranks up the absurdity. The result is chaotic and satisfying, landing somewhere between John Carpenter’s The Thing and Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator.
There’s a lot that sets Hell Hole apart from other Adams Family films. To start, they swapped their hallmark Catskill setting for rural Serbia, and they worked with a crew of roughly 50 people (including a couple of puppeteers), instead of their core group of family and friends, though VFX artist Trey Lindsay did return for this project. Daughters Lulu (who wrote an early version of the script) and Zelda Adams were off on their own adventures during the shoot, both of whom have had a heavy presence behind and in front of the camera in previous films. “This was a neat opportunity to work with a bigger family,” John told the crowd during the Q&A held after the screening.
Family is a key part of every Adams Family film, and Hell Hole is no different. It’s a story about invasive violations, so having Americans in a foreign land digging up the earth to start a fracking site is the perfect setup. These themes go to some wild places as the chaos grows. “We didn’t want to paint the Americans in the best light,” explained Toby, about playing into the hypocritical side of their characters. Motherhood is another common theme across their filmography, but that too gets upended in Hell Hole. “I really wanted to play a woman who had no interest in motherhood whatsoever,” Toby continued, saying that her character has love for the other characters, but she “does what she has to do for money”.
Despite the fun and the camp, Hell Hole doesn’t shy away from the severity of the situations arising from the chaos. “We wanted to make a fun rock ‘n’ roll monster romp,” explained Toby, “but we also wanted to have a conversation about what’s happening in the States.” The final scenes force the characters to reckon with their beliefs and the physical implications of their decisions. The last moments are a gut punch, something we should all be expecting at this point from these filmmakers, since some of the best scenes across their filmography are the final moments of their movies. They still hurt though, every time.
Before settling into Hell Hole, the audience got a chance to see Plastic Smile, a short film made by John and Toby for Screambox’s upcoming Tales From the Void anthology series. Produced by Andrew Koontz and showrunner Francesco Loschavio, the series is an adaptation of six stories from the popular r/No Sleep Reddit. Plastic Smile will surely please fans of anything creepy, though the less you know going in, the better.
Hell Hole is set to release on Shudder on August 23rd.