Shudder’s Latest Sci-Fi Thriller Is B-Movie Horror at Its Best (and Worst)
The most gruesome sci-fi horror movie of the year is streaming now.
It’s tough luck to release a movie about a body-hopping, Lovecraftian, parasite in the same month Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise comes roaring back to life. After all, only a great work of sci-fi horror could survive in the shadow of a hulking Xenomorph. (David Cronenberg’s body-horror masterpiece The Fly buzzed into theaters mere weeks after Aliens, for example, giving it just enough oxygen to stand out.) Unfortunately, Hell Hole, which is streaming now on Shudder, is not a great work of sci-fi horror. Not even close.
Hell Hole, from directors Toby Poser and John Adams, is destined to be forgotten in the face of Alien: Romulus. But if you’re looking for some goopy B-movie thrills and you don’t particularly care about good acting (or you enjoy the unintentional comedy of a poorly acted horror flick) you could do a whole lot worse.
The movie’s CGI looks surprisingly good considering how low-budget everything else feels.
Set in a remote and desolate Serbian town, Hell Hole follows a crew of frackers who accidentally unearth an ancient parasitic monster. Following a brief prologue in which a troupe of Napoleonic soldiers are murdered by the beast (the entire scene looks more like a low-rent ‘90s music video than any sort of actual movie), we jump to the present where an American energy company finds itself at odds with local environmentalists. Before too long, the fracking begins, but it’s quickly cut short when the crew unearths a bizarre, squid-like creature alongside the corpse of a French soldier. It gets even weirder when that corpse suddenly comes to life.
After initially struggling to overcome the language barrier, the parasite that’s been keeping the soldier alive reveals itself and the action begins in earnest. From there, the story plays out more like The Thing than Alien, with the characters all struggling to understand their tormentor as the creature hops from one host to the next.
Standing in a line and shooting at the monster always works, right?
In its best moments, Hell Hole is a grind-house delight. The parasite’s slimy tendrils often wind their way out of their hosts' nostrils and mouth, or, in one case, what appears to be their butthole (the angle was obscured, but I can’t think of any other explanation for what I saw). And when confronted with deadly force, the creature leaps from its victim, causing their head and/or body to implode in a gory mess.
The movie also offers up another tried and true trope of the genre: the scientist who wants to study the monster that’s trying to murder everyone. This is a classic for a reason — there’s nothing scarier than watching humanity’s intelligence get the better of our own survival instinct — and it’s effective in Hell Hole. But none of this is enough to save what’s otherwise a generic script held together by increasingly gross jump scares.
Hell Hole’s practical effects are one of the few things the movie has going for it.
As Hell Hole lurches toward its conclusion and the monster becomes less of a mystery, the movie struggles to find its footing. We’re given several clues that could lead to its undoing — the parasite seems to only target men, and it needs a host to survive. But aside from even more blood and guts (and one red-tinted shot from the perspective of the creature itself), there’s very little payoff to be had in the film’s final moments.
Ultimately, Hell Hole is really just a VFX highlight reel, mixing both practical and some well-done CGI to create a compelling movie monster. But pretty much everything else here is a letdown, from the unpolished script to the flat acting to the minimal set design. If you’re the kind of other person who enjoys a great bad horror movie (and I suspect that plenty of Shudder’s subscribers do) then you’ll probably get a kick out of Hell Hole). If not, I’d suggest clicking over to Disney+ instead, where the entire Alien franchise is available for your streaming pleasure.
