Brought to you by the same family of indie horror filmmakers that did Hellbender that I reviewed last year (or maybe 2022).
Hell Hole takes place in Serbia, where a fracking company finds something really weird buried in the ground, a seemingly living French soldier from the 1800s. Soon enough, there’s a monster making people explode in all the gory glory you would expect.
So, I really liked some things about this. I love that they used Serbian actors for all the Serbian parts, and they universally did a great job. The plot is a fun little monster story and it’s all put together nicely. The movie ends pretty abruptly and a bit strange, so it’s kind of a “huh?” moment, but it still manages to avoid going full abstract.
The only thing I thought was a complete fail was the super-generic guitar metal driven soundtrack. It’s what you would expect to play over people exploding with goofy rubber monsters flailing about, but the rest of the movie doesn’t really carry that same Grindhouse feel. It’s a small thing, but I feel like they were trying to make something a little more “The Thing” then realized they had a much campier film so they leaned into it without changing anything else.
Overall, it is an OK movie that is just a little confused on what it wants to be.
3 out of 5