The Adams Family Takes on Creature Features with the Wonderfully Goopy Hell Hole

If Hellbender was the Adams Family playing in the realm of folk horror, and Where the Devil Roams was their dark carnival, then Hell Hole is, as the premise suggests, their take on a goopy, paranoid creature feature in the vein of John Carpenter’s The Thing. It’s a movie about working-class people just trying to do a job, only to find they’re contending with something far beyond the realm of their understanding, and it’s within that structure that the film mostly succeeds. The dialogue is believable, the world feels lived-in, the characters are just as worried about what weird food they might have for dinner as they are about the strange stuff they just dug up, and the low-budget aesthetic meshes perfectly with the subject matter. It’s a film full of believable, tactile grit, and that makes it both endearing and instantly real for us.

It’s what the filmmakers do next that makes Hell Hole into a mixed bag. As they have in their other films, the Adams crew sprinkles loads of memorable quirks into the narrative, from two workers on the site who won’t stop chatting about nonsense to the way Nikola shifts into full mad scientist mode when he so much as sniffs a potential discovery. There’s an offbeat humor to the whole affair, and an overt, punk-rock cartoonishness (thanks in part to John Adams’ score) to the moments when actual monsters start to squirm across the screen. But the film also has a quieter side, a side that’s interested in the eco-horror of it all; the feminist bent of the way the monster seems to behave; and the ways in which the people we work with can become a sort of chosen family. None of these elements fail outright, but along the way the strange, singular stew starts to feel at least a little diluted by the sheer number of ideas stirring around in the narrative. It feels smarter than your average creature feature, but in its quest to prove that, it sometimes gets lost in the vastness of its own ambition.

Ultimately, though, that doesn’t matter, because what we’re here to see is a monster story, and as a monster story Hell Hole absolutely delivers. The creature effects are satisfying, the violence simultaneously unsettling and hilarious, and the pacing of the film inserts just enough paranoia to keep the tension on while never letting us forget that this is supposed to be fun. As directors, every film Adams and Poser have delivered feels like it’s building on the ones that came before, and visually, that’s definitely true here. The production values of the broken-down Socialist factory buildings that serve as the film’s backdrop are off the charts, the tension and humor are (mostly) well-balanced, and the explosive moments when the monsters come out are enough to leave your jaw on the floor. 

And perhaps more importantly, there’s a sense throughout the film that the Adams Family will keep building on what’s come before, a feeling that these are horror filmmakers still on the ascent. Even when Hell Hole falters, it’s also a reminder that this family of multi-hyphenates has only just begun to show us what they can do, and that makes it all the more thrilling. 

Directors: John Adams, Toby Poser
Writers: John Adams, Toby Poser, Lulu Adams
Starring: John Adams, Toby Poser, Petar Arsić, Aleksandar Trmčić, Marko Filipovic, Anders Hove, Max Portman
Release Date: August 23, 2024 (Shudder)

Matthew Jackson is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire who’s been writing about entertainment for more than a decade. His writing about movies, TV, comics, and more regularly appears at SYFY WIRE, Looper, Mental Floss, Decider, BookPage, and other outlets. He lives in Austin, Texas, and when he’s not writing he’s usually counting the days until Christmas.