Hell Hole (2024) There’s Something in the Dirt (Review)

Better known as “fracking”, the process of hydraulic fracturing is, if you’ll pardon the expression, a largely untapped well of horror potential. The controversial fossil-fuel mining technique (outlawed here in the UK since 2019), is infamous for causing environmental damage, pollution, sickness, and even earthquakes – making it a real-life eco-terror ripe for genre movie gold. Beyond that there’s the very idea of “fossil fuels” themselves because, when you think about it, it’s kind of crazy that humanity’s primary source of energy comes from exhuming the compressed, remains of long-dead creatures that walked the Earth before we did? Who knows what ancient slimy horrors could crawl out of the fractured bedrock? Hell Hole gives us an answer – and it’s not pretty.

Coming to horror streaming giant Shudder a mere few weeks after its world premiere at this year’s Fantasia Festival, Hell Hole is the latest grisly family outing from John Adams, Toby Poser, and the rest of their filmmaking clan. For anyone who’s uninitiated into the wonderful phenomenon that is the Adams “family” (who, for the sake of openness and honesty, I’m not actually related to), they’re the wonderful people responsible for a string of home-made horror hits that have shocked and delighted festival-goers for the past decade (2019’s quietly menacing The Deeper You Dig, the delightfully witchy Hellbender in 2021, and 2023’s wonderful Where the Devil Roams). Those of you familiar with their previous work will notice that Hell Hole is a bit of a different beast, and not just in its change of scenery from the ghostly woods of rural America to the brutalist concrete architecture of Eastern Europe. It also switches up the dark fairy-tale aura of the filmmakers’ prior cinematic outings for the schlock and awe of yesteryear’s creature-features. Make no mistake, this is a midnight movie – and a peculiar one at that.

After an explosive 1800s-set opening, Hell Hole follows an American-led fracking crew in modern-day Serbia, who are digging for shale gas in the ruins of a derelict Soviet-era factory. Led by partners Emily and John (directors Toby Poser and John Adams respectively), the team unearths more than they bargained for when a routine dig uncovers a cocoon containing a preserved, 200-year-old French soldier who’s still alive. Unfortunately this miracle of nature has not returned to the surface alone as a slimy, primordial horror has been growing in the man’s body for centuries – one that seeks a younger, stronger body to squeeze into via any orifice it can. No hole is safe from the tentacled terror, and one-by-one the crew members fight to keep control over their own bodies, which is made all the more difficult by a fascinated biologist who’s more than willing to sacrifice his co-workers to ensure the survival of this new discovery.

Compared to their previous work, Hell Hole is probably the most conventional, or at least classifiable, title in the Adams family’s filmography. It’s a fairly straightforward creature-feature that’s somewhere between 2010’s Rare Exports and 1961’s Reptilicus (and that’s not necessarily a bad thing), that nonetheless, still has some of the distinct flavour of Hellbender or Where the Devil Roams. The growling guitar soundtrack, the down-to-Earth regional vibes, and even the frankness of the dialogue result in some great humour when combined with the delightful absurdity of the film’s concept. It’s also deliciously nasty, full of splattery gore, tentacles coming out of places they shouldn’t, and features an image about 30 minutes in which I don’t think I’ll ever be able to unsee. This could potentially be the Adams family at their grisliest, and it’s certainly the bloodiest film they’ve ever made – a couple of sequences seem to feature buckets of the red stuff.

Hell Hole is also less of a family affair than the Adams’s previous outings, and aside from the absence of daughter Zelda Adams for this project, the film lacks the home-made energy of The Deeper You Dig – which may be down to the involvement of a larger studio in the film’s production this time around. Hell Hole was made in partnership with Not the Funeral Home – the team behind The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs (2018 – present), and the recent Serbian-set shocker Eight Eyes (2022), starring actor Bruno Veljanovski (who plays a supporting role here). By no means do I intend to criticise NTFH for their involvement because it’s absolutely amazing they helped get this film made, but for some reason or another Hell Hole feels less personal than Hellbender or Where the Devil Roams. The rawness of the Adams family’s films are a feature, not a bug, and it’s perhaps that rawness that exposes the beating heart within. It’s not that I think the Adams family shouldn’t have bigger budgets and studio involvement because, quite frankly, they should get all the money to make movies they can possibly get! It just felt as though Hell Hole lacked an emotional core as vivid (or at least visible), as the ones found in the Adams family’s previous projects.

Although its pacing is a little slow to start off with, Hell Hole charms and entertains – and once it gets going the rampage never ends. This is a gruesome, fun, occasionally scatological film that’s best experienced as part of a crowd that gasps and laughs at each new reveal or gore gag. Its opening sequence is one of the boldest I’ve seen in any Shudder movie, and it ends with a hard-cut so blunt and bleak that you can’t help but wheeze with laughter at its unpleasant audacity. Hell Hole is also a thematically potent work in, and in between the tentacular carnage themes of ecological disruption and bodily autonomy are explored in ways which you may think you’ve seen before, but with such sincerity and openness that they feel new. The Adams family are never satisfied to go with a simple “gotcha” when it comes to exploring topical issues, and that’s one of the wonderful things that makes Hell Hole special as a modern-day creature-feature.

Meaty, slimy, and funny, there’s a (w)hole lot of fun to be had with Hell Hole, and it’ll make you think twice before going on a fracking expedition in Serbia (that is, if you were ever going to do that in the first place).

Robyn’s Archive – Hell Hole (2024)