Hellbender (2022)
A bewildering homemade horror shows why story is king.
Presentation:
This is an ugly looking film. Or is it? Contrast is overly strong, the colorgrade is wack and inconsistent, long lenses, chromatic aberation, blown out highlights, crushed blacks, special effects are goofy, practical effects are overdone, this screams homemade production because it is...and yet...40 minutes in you keep watching, because and at some point you kinda like it. It's hard to say if these visuals are bad by design but it somehow works. The saving grace is the camera work and slow zooms are quite nice for his offbeat horror.
Story:
This was extremely surprising. I’d normally stop watching mid movie but i kept waiting for something to happen. And it does, about half way through the movie everything becomes clear and is actually really rewarding and builds a lot of lore and world building. It's actually a very interesting premise, and the unprofessional acting adds to the purity of the piece. It just works as in unapologetically screams indie production. If production was any better quality, i strangely don't think the movie would would hold up to scrutiny.
Conclusion:
It's incredible what a family of 3 can accomplish with just ideas and a story. You don't need fancy visuals, just the will to create a movie. The movie is unapologetically low quality which breaks of limits of what we should expect. A real headscratcher.
Sort by
- action 55
- adventure 30
- animation 5
- biographical 23
- chinese 7
- comedy 30
- coming of age 12
- crime 61
- culinary 3
- detective 12
- documentary 6
- drama 168
- driving 6
- experimental 14
- fantasy 20
- french 10
- heist 4
- historical 12
- horror 45
- japanese 5
- korean 10
- lgb 3
- music 6
- mystery 47
- norwegian 1
- psychological 16
- romance 31
- satire 7
- sci-fi 31
- spanish 4
- sports 5
- superhero 2
- suspense 15
- swedish 1
- thai 1
- thriller 79
- war 11
- western 6
- zombie 3
- 🌶 2
- 🌶🌶 23
- 🌶🌶🌶 86
- 🌶🌶🌶🌶 136
- 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶 49
Sexual exploration for the dreamers and romantics.