Review — Hellbender 2021

Hellbender is a truly phenomenal folk horror film. Family made, on a very small budget, there is just so much to love here. It is, all at once, a beautiful testament to a mother’s fierce and unconditional love and a brutal coming-of-age nightmare, while still managing, throughout, to maintain a simplicity that is both wonderful and horrible. Featuring impressive visual effects and camera work, strong acting, (and some really cool music!) combined with a moving storyline which gradually grows from eerie to unsettling, to frightening…to ultimately reach levels of sheer inescapable terror. I just loved everything about this movie.
In a simple house in the woods, lives a mother and her teenaged daughter, Izzy. They spend their days talking, exploring the woods…and making awesome metal music together!! Izzy must live in isolation, her mother tells her she is too sick to be exposed to other people. But when Izzy, feeling fine, and desperate for social interaction, comes across another teenaged girl, it sets off a truly diabolical chain of events. Izzy learns the truth, not only that she and her mother are witches, but that she possesses a particularly strong and dark power, a power that her mother must teach her to control. As Izzy begins to realize the extent of her own abilities, she must make a choice as to how to use them… will a devoted mother’s influence and love be enough to combat the evil that grows inside of her daughter?
Hellbender is such a monumental masterpiece created from so little, the amazing Adams family went into the woods with not much more than a camera and an idea and what they came out with…is just so impressive it takes your breath away. At its heart Hellbender is a terrifying illustration of the inescapability of the circle of life and death and I cannot recommend it more. To horror fans, metal fans…movie fans! It’s enthralling, it’s touching, it’s disturbing… This is a movie that will affect you and by the end you will be blown away.