One of the highlights of Fantasia 2021 was the film Hellbender. The film was awarded the full five star treatment in our review, the film acting as evidence that the team behind the project were as talented as their previous film, The Deeper You Dig had suggested. What makes the minds behind Hellbender even more interesting is that they are all related, consisting of parents John Adams and Toby Poser, working alongside daughter Zelda Adams. The trio share all duties of the filmmaking process, directing, acting, producing, writing, and more together, creating projects that feel intimate, whilst simultaneously being incredibly inventive.
Hellbender itself tells the tale of Izzy, a young woman who lives in isolation with her mother. The pair’s simple existence is thrown into turmoil after Izzy uncovers a life-altering secret about her lineage, one tied to mythic creatures called Hellbenders. As Izzy learns more about her true nature, the power once held by her mother slips away and a battle for dominance begins.
We first spoke with the talented family back in 2019 at FrightFest and we were thrilled to sit down to chat with them about all things Hellbender.
Although you’ve been making films together for years, The Deeper You Dig was the one that really launched you into the public domain. Did that change your approach to Hellbender at all?
JOHN ADAMS: It’s a great question, no. My answer is no. I mean we were definitely aware of the fact that people seemed to like The Deeper You Dig. We were super thankful about that. And we wanted to make another movie that people enjoyed, so there was only that artistic pressure. I think we learned a lot; we did a lot of festivals, we read the reviews, we talked to the audience. We love all that interaction. I think really what we wanted to do with Hellbender is take what we had done well and continue with it and try to lose the things that maybe we were criticised uniformly for.
ZELDA ADAMS: I do remember though, when we finished The Deeper You Dig, we were like, “oh, wow, people really love this. We should go even bigger.” So we started talking about our next film and how we wanted to have a bigger production, a bigger crew, more actors, shoot in a public school, and all this, but then Covid kind of put us in our place. So it brought us back down to our small-scale, which in the long run, I think was really great, and turned out really well for the outcome of the movie.
An aspect that I myself really connected with was the fact that we never learn Mother’s name. She is always just Izzy’s mum. Since becoming a mother myself I’ve found that for a lot of people that is simply how you are referred to and it can be a struggle to hold onto one’s own identity. Was this an intentional aspect of motherhood that you wanted to call attention too?
TOBY POSER: Absolutely, and I’ve been waiting for someone to point that out, and you’re the first I believe. It was intentional, and for the same reasons you just said. I think that sometimes mothers just feel like that’s their identity. In this case the mother, I think I almost felt as if the mother hadn’t earned her name in this film because she was starving her Hellbender nature from her daughter. Her place was really coming from a very maternal and protective place. So we thought, let’s just call her Mother, that’s who she is. Maybe if we make a Hellbender 2 she might have earned her name again.
Hellbender is a film driven and punctuated by music. I know that you guys have your own family band. How much music already existed and how much did you create solely for the film?
ZA: One specific song Black Sky… we are making a music video for it, and it was really dark and witchy and really interesting. We were like, “wow, we have to make a movie like this.” So Hellbender was kind of sprung from a song that we had already made, then we started making a lot more music that was very similar in tone to that one song.
JA: We made a little mistake, there was this cool editing mistake that happened when we were putting together this video called Black Sky and that really informed how we edited the dream sequences in Hellbender. It became really important to us. It was a wonderful mistake that we made and then we figured out the architecture of what that was and utilised it heavily in the movie.
Sticking with the musical moments, the make-up worn by Izzy and Mother changes throughout their rehearsals. What was the thought process behind the evolution of these looks?
ZA: For one, we wanted to show that the mom does try to give Izzy a good time by doing their makeup and doing their costumes, giving Izzy a fun time, even though they are, you know, in isolation away from the world. So it is sweet when you think of it that way. But also the makeup was a really good way of kind of putting in some hidden symbolism of what’s going on within the movie. You know, in the beginning, Izzy, her makeup is a tear coming down her eyes. That can be, you know, sadness of being in isolation away from the world. It also looks like ropes, one could perceive it that way, like a noose, kind of like the scene right before hand with the witch and the hanging and everything. There’s also a band scene with X’s on Toby’s eyes and, you know, people can perceive that however they want.
TP: We had so much fun with the make-up. Just to have these subliminal messages that we wanted to help with driving the story.
Hellbenders are a riff off of witches, vampires and demons; how much fun did you have birthing your own cinematic occult “monster”?
JA: A ton of fun because we got to sit around and talk about inventing monsters and mythological figures all the time. And it’s so cool. We went through a wide range of what kind of monsters we were trying to create. From baby-eaters where that’s where they got their power, to worm-eaters, to fear-eaters. It’s like a mix of a vampire in this, there’s a witch, there’s some cannibalism. There’s all this really fun stuff in there, but I think most important to us is that they are based in nature. We’re big campers, we’re big hikers, we love being outdoors, and when you’re outdoors a lot you just are surrounded by hidden magic. You’re always looking at things and you say to yourself “I know that there’s some magic formula to this beautiful plant, but I don’t know what it is.” That’s what’s fun about Hellbender is they do, that magic is built in their DNA.
ZA: There were a lot of times where we were trying to think about what we wanted a Hellbender to do, and what their everyday life was to be like, and a lot of times we were “oh no, a Hellbender wouldn’t do that,” and we thought, “wait, what are basing this off of? We can make whatever rules we want.” So it was fun. I remember saying, “oh wow, we can freaking have a Hellbender have moss and branches for dinner. We can make whatever rules we want to,” and it was so fun.
Toby and Zelda, I think I’m correct when I say that neither of you eat meat. How was it channelling your inner dormant carnivores to sell the characters?
TP: It was pretty cool. I think in the end, even though I’m a very open-minded vegan, I definitely had to agree that Hellbenders needed to get some meat in them. I did really enjoy the scenes with the pine cones and the raspberry thorn, making those places look like something on the cover of a gourmet magazine. I thought it tasted quite lovely.
And the foraged food really does look like it belongs in a Michelin starred restaurant…
ZA: Thank you.
TP: In North-West too, where we were shooting the first kind of witchy scene, in the dark, where mother is gathering and foraging things to create the first sigil, when you’re in nature, you realise how everything – a lot of that was poisonous – but just foraged fungi, and the green moss. Everything just looks so delicious in nature.
Hellbender is arriving on Shudder, the genre streaming giant, covering the whole gamut of horror films. Where do you see your film sitting?
JA: We’re super honoured to be on Shudder, and one of the reasons we love Shudder is because of the movies that they pick to put on their streaming platform. What an honour for us, and we love the Shudder crowd. If you go and read the reviews of the Shudder viewers, it’s really cool. They’re super informed by what they like about movies. So we’re just honoured to be a part of their whole world.
I hear that your next project will take place back in time. What, if anything, can you share about that one?
ZA: It’s called When the Devil Roams. It takes place in the 1930’s and is about this family, a really peculiar family of artistic serial killers. They’re travelling through the carnival circuit, doing an act, and something really bad happens to the parents, and the daughter is left to pick up the pieces. It’s a really fun mix between Bonnie and Clyde and Frankenstein, and for this film, a little bit different to Hellbender, we’re going to be working with body horror, and lots of blood.
Hellbender arrives on Shudder across the globe on 24th February 2022.
