From last year Hellbender is a coming-of-age rural set American horror film, which is edged with dark trip-ness and wonderful use of moody largely woodland set cinematography. Here from Acorn Media International, we have a DVD of this Shudder Channel original film- with the disc taking in a few featurettes and music videos.

Hellbender is the 7th film from the Adams family- who both co-direct & act in their films. This one it’s jointly directed by father John, daughter Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser who is Zelda’s real-life mother/ John's partner. And I must say this is a very impressive scoped, acted, and realized picture. The film sides in at the one hour and sixteen-minute mark, and it’s a fairly slowly paced & building tension affair- but it largely comes off as an entertaining, at times subtle unsettling film.

The film opens with a period flashback- which I’m guessing is the 1800s. We see a woman being hung in the woods, her face is covered by sacking- she’s pulled up, and seemingly dies- but suddenly comes back to life twitching and growling- she is shot several times, but this seems to make no difference to the bodies manic twitching. Next, we switch to the present day- where we are introduced to teen daughter Izzy(Zelda Adams) and her raggedy-haired 50-something mother(Toby Poser)- the pair are playing in their rocky-come-punk two-piece- with Izzy on Drums and mother on the bass. We find out that Izzy is not allowed to have contact with anyone, as her mother told her she has a depleted immune system/ a nasty long-term disease. But as you’d imagine things aren’t quite what they seem.

The pair's house is set deep in tall woodland- mother goes into town, ever so often, which is a good drive away. It becomes clear mother is a witch of some sort, as she practices earthy magic- with a secret room at the top of the house- which is open by pressing her hand against the symbol on the wall, and a key appears through her hand. Izzy is understandably fed up with her isolated life, seemingly never leaving the house and the surrounding woods. One day while out wandering in the tall evergreen forest, she comes across an isolated swimming pool- here she meets fiery and boisterous blond Amber( Lulu Adams), with the pair quickly becoming friends

As things unfold Izzy finds out exactly what she is a Hellbender- a sort of animalistic, flesh-blood and spirit-caving witch. The film blends together moody/ brooding shots of the woods through the seasons, inside the pair's gloomy house, with sudden rushes of occult/ darker/horror-fed imagery, bloody to earthy rituals, and the general growing in power of young Izzy- and the issues this causes.

For the most part, the family-linked cast are rather good & convincing in their roles- but for me I’d say that Lulu Adam’s as Izzy mischievous and fiery friend is a highlight. Though mother and daughter leads are good too- and in a few scenes they put themselves through the wringer- for example, they bloodily vomit on each other in the brilliant white snow. The effects and imagery clearly had a small budget- but they do manage to be both creative, and clever with these- one example of this is an unsettling flesh-like tunnel. Music wise we get touches of brooding mood scaping, and mother/ daughters music- which goes between joint female sang rock punk, and a more stripped back sort of barren bass lead folk tune which rather brought to mind a feminine take on Boduf Songs.

I’d been aware of the Adams family's name for a while now- so it was great to finally see one of their films, and I must say I was most impressed with what I saw with great use of atmosphere, setting, and creative/ interesting effects. 

Moving onto this new blu ray, and as this is a modern film the print looks good- with the family giving it a good and classy look, above its low budget. On the extras side, we get a nearing ten-minute featurette on the effects, five music videos, two minutes of bloopers, and around nine minutes of behind the scene footage.

If you enjoy slow-burn horror/darker-hued coming-of-age films with a brooding undercurrent. I’d say you’ve got to give Hellbender a go, and I’ll be looking into the Adams family filmography now- as they have a distinctive and creative take on genre filmmaking.