Shudder Saturday: Hellbender (2021)

I ALMOST didn't review Hellbender. I'd picked it to view and review after hearing good things about it and then, at the end of my first viewing, I couldn't figure out how I felt about it. That happens sometimes. So I figured I would choose something else to review instead. Then I managed to fit in a second viewing, hoping that things might click for me. Things clicked.

Directed by, written by, and starring Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, and John Adams, with a supporting role for Lulu Adams, this is very much a DIY movie, and very much a family affair. I can understand why the idea of that may scare some people off. Those kinds of movies often end up as little more than barely-competent vanity projects, but Hellbender just feels like the right people gave themselves the right jobs (almost all of them) for the material.

A phrase that has been bandied around often in recent years is "we are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn", and Hellbender takes this slogan quite literally. Because it starts with a witch who refuses to die. Things then move to the present day, where Izzy (Zelda Adams) lives a sheltered life with her mother (Toby Poser). Izzy and her mother also play together in a band, rocking out some great tunes, but that is probably the very limit of her allowed excitement. Which all changes when Izzy starts to yearn for the wider world outside, makes friends with a young woman named Amber (Lulu Adams), and is soon given a history lesson about her powerful family tree.

Although obviously made with a low budget and limited resources, Hellbender shows how that isn't an excuse for an unimaginative and lazy final product. It all depends on whether or not you want to buy into the central concept, but at least it's one that feels interesting enough and ripe with potential for material that easily fills this runtime, and could (hopefully) lead to a sequel, or at least another film that could complement this one.

Adams and Poser are both excellent in the lead roles, carrying almost every scene between them, with the focus being on one or the other, or both together. Lulu Adams is also very good in her supporting role, and John Adams gets himself onscreen as a character who has a memorable encounter with the leading ladies.

As for their work in the directing and writing departments, well, let's just say that the family prove themselves to be sickeningly talented. I'm really looking forward to whatever they do next, and I am also excited to go back and check out The Deeper You Dig (their 2019 film that got some praise when released, but just didn't ever become a high priority on my ever-expanding "to watch" list).

Witty, consistently interesting, nicely blending some fleeting scares with some artistic imagery, and focused very much on the power within women that so easily scares off men who mistakenly equate femininity with weakness, Hellbender is a film I will easily recommend to anyone looking out for a new horror movie to watch. Even if, like me, you only fully appreciate it after giving it a second viewing.

8/10

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Witchcraft (1988)

Witchcraft is a straight-to-video horror title that I would never have felt the need to watch until I discovered one important fact. It started a series that has currently reached instalment number sixteen. SIXTEEN. I'm not sure how easy they are to get a hold of but, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I am going to do my very best to see them all.

Grace (Anat Topol) is about to have a baby. All is going swimmingly with her husband John (Edward Ross AKA Gary Sloan) until they move into his mother's house. That's when the plot really begins to start up. Grace starts having disturbing visions, her favourite priest (Alexander Kirkwood) is adversely affected, and there are generally unsettling goings on that prey on her mind.

Directed by Rob Spera and written by Jody Savin, who haven't done anything else that I have seen (to date), Witchcraft is, to reach for the nearest comparison, a clumsy mix of Rosemary's Baby and The Devonsville Terror. The visions mostly feel plucked from the latter, a scene in which a number of visitors gather round to see the baby highlights the former, especially when Grace is visted by an attractive friend, Linda (Deborah Scott), who is pointedly ogled by at least one of the older visitors.

The acting is about what you would expect from a DTV flick called Witchcraft. Topol and Sloan aren't great, Mary Shelley plays the mother-in-law in a turn clearly influenced by "The Handbook Of How To Portray People Who Are Really Really Suspicious And Probably Evil", Kirkwood is given the obvious selection of affected priest tics to work with, and Scott is a surprising highlight. You also get Lee Kissman as Ellsworth, a man who seems to roam the house missing the days when he was being trained up for the role by his Uncle Lurch.

Despite the limitations of the budget, there's a lot here that's better than it could be. Savin may have written a pretty awful script but that's compensated for by decent enough work on the technical side. Yes, most of the film takes place in the one location, with one or two scene set elsewhere (supposedly set elsewhere, I should say), but the camera moves around okay, the editing doesn't make it into an unwatchable mess, and even the music by Randy Miller isn't too bad.

With a few extra ingredients this could have been a much better film. It tries to play things too seriously when it should have gone all-out and just had more fun. The fact that it resists the impulse to pad out the runtime with gratuitous nudity and gore is admirable, yet it also feels like this is the kind of film that would benefit from such obvious tactics, especially when the few special effects moments on display here are among the more careless and disappointing aspects.

It wasn't a great film but it wasn't too painful to watch. I had a little bit of fun with it. I wonder if I'll feel the same way when watching the sixteenth film in the series.

4/10

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