'Hell Hole' Reviews: "With one eye on the real life horrors of looming environmental collapse and another on the enduring power of the classic monster movie, Hell Hole is another feather in the already plume-abundant Adams Family cap"

         On August 23, Shudder releases 'Hell Hole', which has earned predominantly positive reviews from critics, holding at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the film, a mining team unwittingly releases a dormant parasitic monster that searches for a perfect human host. The ensemble cast includes Toby Poser, Anders Hove, Bruno Veljanovski, John Adams, and Max Portman. But what did the critics say? 

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

        Alexandra Heller-Nicholas of AWFJ.org notes, "With one eye on the real life horrors of looming environmental collapse and another on the enduring power of the classic monster movie, Hell Hole is another feather in the already plume-abundant Adams Family cap." Adding, "While the Adams Family have long tackled a range of different horror subgenres in their stride, this venture into good old fashioned creature feature terrain feels like a bold shift in many ways, while remaining as confident and as compelling as their previous efforts. Stepping away from the family-focused scenarios of their last three films, Hell Hole is a very different kind of ensemble piece, finding the core team of Toby Poser and John and Lulu Adams really expanding their rules of engagement and bringing in a team of local and international collaborators with great success."

       Luke Gorham of In Review Online writes, "Hell Hole isn’t much more than a slightly spunky but otherwise run-of-the-mill “delved too deep” horror effort — gleefully gooey, inclined toward bodily obliteration, but far more of an outline than a final product." 

       Josh Korngut of Dread Central praises the film, stating, "The parasitical body horrors of ‘Hell Hole’ read like a punk kid’s frostbitten love letter to John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing.’" Concluding, "While its script may not be the strongest ever produced by this group of artists, the messaging is bold, fresh, and capital “i” important. The film stands above its predecessors with yet another standout supporting performance by Poser as the hardened Emily, a competent woman struggling to save her team. We should hate her and her group for what they’re doing, but early on, their performances promise that they’re no different from us. And that greed is innate to the human condition. But they sure as shit get what’s coming to them."

       Jennie Kermode of Eye for Film says, "Turning the usual cinematic rules of cephalopod/human interaction upside down, Hell Hole picks up a popular line from recent political debates and interprets it very literally, exposing hypocritical attitudes in the process but also having tremendous fun. It also explores the interesting dynamic between the Americans and the local Serbian workers, who have their own distinctive humour. A budding romance between Teddy and Sofija adds a note of sweetness and a different kind of comedy. Once the group – who have no phone of internet signal and are cut off from the outside world by a flooded road – begin to try and fight back, there are splatter effects galore. Too silly to be upsetting, too well crafted to be dismissed, Hell Hole strikes just the right balance and does a great job of sustaining it throughout. Poser impresses with an unusually gentle kind of performance, though it’s notable that her character doesn’t need a lot of persuading to abandon others to their fate. Adams takes one for the team where some of the more intimate effects are concerned. The rest falls into place nicely, and although this may not be their most sophisticated work, it’s a natural crowd-pleaser."