Over the course of their eight-year collective filmmaking practice, the Adams family have continuously honed their aesthetic and narrative interests as artists. With Hellbender, the sixth feature from the nuclear family of filmmakers, confidence and creativity converge to produce something that feels like an alchemic breakthrough. Particularly following their 2020 supernatural thriller The Deeper You Dig, it appears the Adams have acquired a penchant for horror—a perfect complement to their signature low-budget, home-grown style. Though Hellbender utilizes many recurring motifs present in the Adams family’s work—such as dysfunctional family dynamics and nods to John Adams’ former career as a punk musician—it is certainly the most (literally) fleshed-out project the family has undertaken to date.
16-year-old Izzy (Zelda Adams, the youngest daughter and fellow co-director of John Adams and Toby Poser) has been warned from a young age by her mother (Poser) that the outside world will cause her nothing but harm due to her rare autoimmune disease. As such, Izzy spends her days frustrated and friendless, with only the vast landscape surrounding her mother’s reclusive mountain home providing her with any semblance of personal enrichment. Despite being forbidden to leave the property, Zelda’s relationship with her mother is far from acrimonious—they are playfully affectionate with one another, cradling each other’s faces in their hands and venturing into the verdant forest for rainy day hikes. They even perform in a drum and bass punk rock band, appropriately named Hellbender, donning audacious face make-up and practicing tight, catchy songs for the sole benefit of themselves. Of course, natural teenage curiosity eventually becomes too much to bear, and Zelda befriends a girl named Amber (Lulu Adams, Zelda’s older sister) who hijacks the pool owned by some “citiots” while they’re out of town. When Izzy eats a worm during a round of gross (but mostly harmless) tequila shot hazing, she begins to exhibit strange behavior that appears aggressive toward Amber and her other friends. Apparently, a Hellbender isn’t just a name reserved for a punk rock outfit. It also refers to ancient, witch-like beings who derive great power from the fading lives of dying creatures. When they consume the blood and flesh of one such lifeform, it intensifies their own powers. It turns out Izzy isn’t sick at all, but has merely been cut off from society due to her mother’s fear that she’s a danger to those who interact with her.
The coming-of-age emphasis of Hellbender is absolutely bolstered by Zelda’s close involvement with her parents as a writer and director, with her lead performance oozing a palpable sense of adolescent loneliness and volatility. While Izzy’s status as a sheltered outsider is easy enough to relate to, her descent into a frenzied hunger for power completely subverts her original characterization, shattering any generic relatability the audience may have once had with her. This is far from a bad thing—the existential ego death many will vouch for having experienced as a teen is taken to its most nauseating extreme, provoking a familiarity that is slowly revoked with each escalating incident. Hellbender is also specifically tethered to womanhood, as it appears the titular entities only generate through matriarchal lineages. It’s clear that Izzy and her mother have an incredible closeness, but the rigidity and claustrophobia of being confined to the mountain abode draws a wedge between the two over time. Men are featured minimally throughout the film—even a brief appearance from writer/director/dad John Adams serves to move the plot forward as quickly as possible without lingering on any pesky character details. Relationships between women are hardly presented as idyllic and without conflict, but the near total absence of men (aside from the two women’s victims) can’t help but feel pointed.