Hellbender

Hellboredom! Another festival indie over which the local critics will wank about how beautifully slow, festival, artsy and useless it is. Hellbenders is a very intimate and cheap horror film about a daughter’s relationship with her mother, who keeps her isolated somewhere in the woods. She claims she is sick and not allowed to associate with other people. Their family has something to do with witchcraft. I was looking forward to a witch horror movie with black magic and instead, I got a talky drama of two unlikeable characters with awful music, dollar store visuals, lame CGI and a tediously boring flow. Nothing interesting actually happened in the meager 80 minutes. No gore, no atmosphere, no suspense, no jumps-cares and no surprises, just another slow burn cesspool for "the chosen ones". Story 2/5, Action 0/5, Humour 0/5, Violence 1/5, Fun 2/5 Music 1/5, Visuals 2/5, Atmosphere 2/5, Suspense 1/5, Emotion 2/5, Actors 2/5. 3/10. (24.02.2022)

"My mother ate half of the village, including a few of her friends. She was so ashamed she sewed her lips together." The original subject matter and the work with the witch phenomenon mean that dialogue like "I ate a worm." "Are your friends all right?" can come naturally in the film and I think that's awesome. While the cinematography often has its limits (especially in interiors) and the male characters are probably created by someone who just read about men in some high school feminist magazine, again, it's auteur-driven, erratic, and idiosyncratic, so let's be tolerant. (04.03.2022)