Nights of Horror: Hellbender (2021)

Hellbender (USA, 2021)

I’d been meaning to give my attention to Wonder Wheel Productions for a while, after reading about them in the Jan/Feb 2022 issue of Rue Morgue magazine when it came out. They’re a collective of filmmakers composed of parents John Adams and Toby Poser, and their daughters Zelda and Lula Adams, and have been making films as a family for over ten years. Hellbender (or H6llb6nd6r) was filmed over the course of a 20,000 mile road trip they took during the pandemic, which explains why I wasn’t able to pinpoint its setting.

The story centers on a mother and her teenage daughter living in isolation on an unnamed mountain, making punk music for fun, and eating the flora the forest provides. They’re cute hippie vegetarian types, and their chemistry is so evident that it makes up for the stilted dialogue. We almost feel like there’s more being said between them when neither of them is speaking. I kept thinking “It’s not that they’re bad actors, they’re actually great, just, this script is…. Off? Like the characters themselves are following a script?” I found out why shortly later.

The daughter isn’t allowed to go off the mountain because she has a rare auto immune disease that could kill her if she comes into contact with other people. A chance encounter with some other teenagers leads us to understand it’s not the daughter that needs protecting.

The power and carnage that follow are explained by the mother’s admission that they come from a long line of self-reproducing nomads called Hellbenders, described in the film as “kind of a cross between a witch, a demon, and an apex predator.” She has been protecting humanity from her powerful and bloodthirsty daughter, who gets only more powerful and bloodthirsty as the film wears on.

But in the same vein as American Horror Story: Coven, when a new Supreme rises, the other one fades away. The mother’s powers dissipate as her daughter grows strength, and historically, the fate of the mother must go by the way of the seasons: Spring eats Winter, Winter eats Fall, Fall eats Summer, Summer eats Spring. Watching this woman love her daughter and try to be a good influence, her own imminent death looming as her kid’s independence translates to lies and cruelty, it’s equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking. All I wanted to do was recommend this trippy, atmospheric, DIY punk, highly original family affair to my own mother, and all the mothers I know.

So that’s my recommendation, friends, especially my friends that are mothers and daughters.

You can find Hellbender on Shudder.