Hellbender (2022)

Directed by John & Zelda Adams & Toby Poser. Starring Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, Lulu Adams, John Adams.

Intriguing but rushed and uneven folk horror tale of a mother-daughter pair living in seclusion in the woods. The overprotective mother (Poser) gives the daughter (Zelda Adams) some tastes of the world beyond their property—the two of them even play heavy metal music together as a duo—but as the daughter learns more and more of her family’s history with witchcraft, meeting a teenage girl and her friends spells trouble. Although unpredictable on the level of a coming-of-ager, the pointillist dots we’re given don’t paint a full picture even from aftermath’s distance. Vividly disturbing images break up the otherwise flat and low-contrast aesthetic (a repercussion of budgetary limitations, I suspect), but at least the filmmakers play with surreal compositions to keep the viewer’s attention active instead of restless. Yet in order for it to have been a success worth revisiting and studying, these promising but unfulfilled character and occultism ideas should have been sorted out at the screenplay stage before shooting began. As it was with these filmmakers’ earlier film, The Deeper You Dig, it’s a proper family affair (John Adams and Toby Poser are married, Zelda and Lulu are their children) with one or more of them each handling directing, acting, producing, writing, editing, sound, costuming, music, and camera duties.

62/100