Fantasia Fest 2021 Review: ‘Hellbender’ Struggles to Keep Momentum

hellbender review fantasia fest 2021
Wonder Wheel Productions

What do you get when you mix a coming-of-age story with witchcraft, crazy visuals, wacky little gore moments, and mother/daughter bonding? You get this strange film Hellbender. While the film does have its fun moments and an interesting mother/daughter relationship, it’s a movie that struggles too many times to keep the momentum going.

After a solid start to the film, we meet the two leads, Izzy (Zelda Adams) and Mother (Toby Poser). Mother, who is a witch, has decided to keep her daughter home and protect her, using the guise that she is ill and needs to stay away from people. What she is really protecting Izzy from is going too dark and potentially killing humans once she discovers her powers. However, as any parent knows, being overprotective never works in the end, and as Izzy discovers who she is, and her family’s deep ties to witchcraft, she proceeds to explore these powers with the expected chaotic results.

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The mother/daughter relationship is everything here, and the chemistry between Zelda Adams and Toby Poser works more often than not. I mean, they are in a rock band together, it doesn’t get much cooler than that. They carry the film and help smooth over some of the rougher parts, which sometimes feels like it’s going to disintegrate into a campy B-movie. Poser is solid as the overprotective witch/mother and Adams is great as her daughter. Having a teenage daughter of my own, some of their conversations, while possibly sneered at by some, made me grin and nod, having experienced them myself (minus the witchcraft, of course).

Hellbender is written and directed by the Adams family so to speak, with Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, and John Adams (who plays Uncle) all sharing the credits. It makes sense, watching this film, why some scenes work when they shouldn’t, as there is a real sense of family here. However, at times things feel a bit disjointed, which may be a result of too many people involved.

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There are some really odd music and visual choices in the film as well, and some work while some do not. The practical effects are pretty decent, but some of the visual effects just didn’t work. Also, there were numerous times where the characters struggled with the dialogue, which was weird as this is a family affair all around. This was the main reason scenes struggled, and any solid momentum that had been built up was lost over and over again.

In the end, I enjoyed more things than not, the little gore scene with humor in the snow was great, but the struggles did really make Hellbender drag at times, even with a 86-minute runtime. The film is something a little different for the witchcraft/coming-of-age sub-genre, but weighed down too many times by its own good intentions.

Hellbender recently had its premiere at Fantasia Film Fest 2021.


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