Zelda Adams in Hellbender. Courtesy of AMC Networks' Shudder.
Hellbender is a lo-fi punk rock horror assault on the senses that marks yet another fascinating entry in the coming-of-witch subgenre that has slowly crept its way into the canon — The Witch, The Craft, and Thelma first come to mind. Upstate New York filmmaking family The Adams make up for the movie's rough edges with its pure audaciousness and genuine creeps that get under your skin. If you don't know their name now, learn it.
The opening scene of Hellbender is a heavy metal assault on the senses as a group of women try (and fail) to kill another by hanging her. When that doesn't do the trick, a revolver's worth of bullets go into her head which the woman — or creature? — shrugs off. When the group tries to end it with a knife, she takes off into the sky screaming and aflame giving way to the movie's title card accompanied by one of the few songs on the movie's punk rock soundtrack.
The scene gets under your skin and makes you feel dirty, which is a compliment considering what The Adams' intentions are.
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However, before the creeps continue we're treated to a mini-concert in a makeshift studio in a basement. The band members are 16-year-old Lizzie and her mother (played by real mother-daughter duo Zelda Adams and Toby Poser). The band's name: H6LLB6ND6R (the family wrote and produced all the music featured in the movie). Their off-the-grid mountaintop existence is explained by a rare autoimmune disorder Lizzie has had since birth. But, blessedly, the movie makes clear that that is not the case.
Unlike other supernatural coming-of-age movies, one of the virtues of Hellbender is its complete transparency about the kind of movie it is, as evidenced by its opening scene. That isn't the mystery of the movie. Instead, the movie focuses on Lizzie's own discovery of her powers after her first encounter with another teen (Lulu Adams) and her relationship with her mother, whose sole mission is to protect Lizzie from herself. Well, maybe also protect others from her too.
Eventually, Lizzie's mother reveals that she is a Hellbender, “a cross between a witch, a demon and an apex predator.” The way that the mythology unfolds is trippy and mesmerizing as we learn that consuming life — until now Lizzie was kept on a strict diet of foraged food from the forest — unlocks their powers. The imaginative sequences of magic are awe-inspiring but also devilishly creepy in a surrealistic way.
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Of course, things take a turn and we eventually learn the curses of being a Hellbender. Still, the movie never loses focus of its mother-daughter narrative, even when going full-tilt horror. Hellbender doesn't waste a second of its lean 86 minute runtime and it's all the better for it.
You have to admire The Adams and their pure ambition as a self-taught filmmaking family. Sure, Hellbender isn't perfectly crafted. But what it lacks in precision it makes up for in pure charm. You can feel the family's love of their craft wafting through the screen. They aren't trying to emulate anything that has come before them. It's a completely singular project that reminds us that anyone can be a filmmaker. You just have to have the audacity to do it. The Adams have the audacity — and then some.
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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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