In This Is Spinal Tap, one of the eponymous rock band’s hits is called Hell Hole. As the song has it, “It’s better / In a hell hole / You know where you stand / In a hell hole.” The sentiment applies perfectly to this amiable low-budget effort from the Adamses, a self-taught film-making family, that hits all the notes required of this type of movie, to mostly satisfying effect.
The subgenre of horror here is the rampage of the eldritch beastie: think HP Lovecraft, The Thing, or The Blob. These critters usually come from above or below, winging their way in from outer space or emerging from a long snooze beneath the surface of the Earth. In this instance, it’s the slumber party option, as environmentalists and a crew of US-led frackers encounter a freaky octopoid parasite while drilling in a remote part of Serbia. Soon enough, the octopoid baby is worming its way into their inner circles, quite literally.
The gang of potential victims include John, played by co-writer-director John Adams, doing a nice line in hardass cynic, co-writer-director Toby Poser as auntie Em, also doing a nice line in hardass cynic, and Maximum Portman as Em’s tagine-cooking nephew. The Serbian location is a colourful touch, with drone shots of bombed-out communist-era architecture hinting at ideas of shells and power structures that map on to the parasitic creature that is intent on invading its host and setting up shop.
The subtext should not be overemphasised, however; this isn’t aiming to be intellectual film-making and is way more concerned with being a fun creature feature, in which it largely succeeds. Employing a mixture of computer FX and tangibly syrupy blood, Hell Hole operates at the level of a modest TV show, but, you sense, on a tenth of the budget, which helps make the film endearing. Existing as a labour of love isn’t enough by itself to earn any film a pass mark, but when the result is a committed piece of indie genre work with a suitably silly sense of the macabre, this gets the job done.
• Hell Hole is on Shudder and AMC+ from 23 August.
