A Gleefully Grisly Body Horror Throwback To John Carpenter’s The Thing

The body horror subgenre is one of the more fascinating and wide-ranging of the larger genre’s history, with everything from alien doppelgängers in Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the slow transformation into an insect-human hybrid in The Fly. With

Hell Hole (2024)

, the creative team known as The Adams Family — comprised of directors/writers/stars John Adams, Terry Poser and writer Lulu Adams — look to recapture the same chills and thrills of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Though this results in some gleefully shocking visuals and a fast-paced story, there are a few missteps along the way.

Hell Hole centers on Emily, John and Teddy, an American fracking team trapped in the middle of the Serbian wilderness as the roads leading away from the site are deeply flooded. As they grapple with the isolation from the world and pressure from government-assigned environmental advisors, they are surprised by the discovery of a French soldier from the Napoleonic army buried deep in the Earth and harboring a dormant parasitic monster. While they try to determine the nature of the creature, they find themselves becoming its target as it searches for the perfect new host.

Hell Hole’s Story Is A Fresh Approach To The Creature Body Horror Subgenre

Taking a page out of Carpenter’s Thing playbook, the Adams Family take an initially basic approach to setting up Hell Hole‘s story, albeit with a few unique twists. The focus on an American-led group of frackers in a foreign country invites some fitting discussions of its effect on the planet and environment, particularly as they’re doing it in the middle of the Serbian wilderness, where the environmental advisors explain there to be a number of region-specific species. While some of these concerns are shaken off a little too easily by the characters, it establishes the tension to come between them.

Once the creature is discovered is where Hell Hole starts to nicely forge its own original path. Rarely has body horror seen those infected or possessed by the movie’s entity still largely in control of their actions and behavior, and yet everyone from the unearthed French soldier to the creature’s subsequent victims actually show a sense of agency in the hopes of keeping those around them safe, save for killing themselves, as the creature won’t allow them to do so.

This, in turn, leads to one of Hell Hole‘s more intriguing story aspects: The creature will only target men rather than women in the hopes of reproducing. Where many of the characters seek to take their lives to prevent the creature from spreading, the lead scientist does frequently argue for the creature to be protected by leaving whomever it inhabits alive and safe. Much of his argument for its preservation holds interesting thematic parallels with discussions surrounding abortion, making the flip to the men being the creature’s host all the more of a fascinating exploration of the topic.

Hell Hole’s Practical Effects Look Superb

Though the film’s CGI is dodgy

While it certainly gets some mileage with its themes and characters, Hell Hole also makes sure to stay true to delivering what we expect from its creature feature aesthetic with some gleefully disgusting practical effects. The creature’s design is reminiscent of classic ’50s and ’60s sci-fi horror movies, including Phantasm director Don Coscarelli’s unique filmography, with an unsettling mashup of various real animals that creates a sense of shock. The Adams Family smartly never give a full-on look at the creature for most of the film, building a feeling of the unknown and unpredictability about how to defeat it.

Despite the great practical effects, Hell Hole begins to falter with the use of CGI for some sequences. There are instances where the digital effects look great, namely when the creature’s tentacles emerge out of its hosts. But other moments make the movie’s independent budget quite apparent, whether it’s the CGI version of the creature running through an open field to chase down fleeing people, or certain hosts exploding as the creature escapes their body. There’s no denying the level of ambition the Adams Family are striving for in these moments, but the actual execution is a bit underwhelming.

Hell Hole’s Direction & Style Are A Bit Too Much Of A Tonal Jumble

One of the other elements I ultimately found myself mixed on was Adams and Poser’s directorial style. The film’s opening flashback to the Napoleonic era is one of the more visually stunning of the movie, rendered nearly entirely in black and white with only some elements, like the French soldiers’ blue uniforms, colored in. The directorial duo also builds unique tension by leaving the camera situated at a distance from certain characters during seemingly innocuous discussions in unsettling locations.

However, where this begins to crack is in some of the editorial decisions with certain sequences. Ranging from scenes of the discovery of the buried French soldier to a character beating up another after being insulted, the use of quick zoom-ups to indicate the force of a hit and looping footage every three seconds is a bit forced. It makes it seem like the directors are attempting to create a music video within the film. This leads to many scenes being tonally out of place from the rest of the movie, creating an energetic atmosphere rather than one of tension.

Despite these missteps, Hell Hole is a really rewarding experience for horror genre fans who have longed to see a crazy body horror outing in the vein of The Thing. Between its interesting thematic layers melded with its thoroughly bloody set pieces and interesting characters, the movie offers plenty of compelling twists to its format, which helps set it apart and overcome its lackluster elements.

Hell Hole is now available to stream on Shudder.