Young Izzy has lived an isolated life in upcoming horror Hellbender. However, a chance encounter with a new friend finds Izzy questioning her life and finding out a few dark secrets about her family…
Watch the trailer for the movie here…
In Hellbender, 16-year-old Izzy (Zelda Adams) is kept isolated on a mountaintop with her mother (Toby Poser), who tells her she has a serious illness and can’t be around other people. However, Izzy begins to question her sickness and pushes back against her confinement, secretly befriending Amber (Lulu Adams). Her happiness at finally connecting with someone is short-lived, however, after she eats a live worm as part of a juvenile game and finds an insatiable and violent hunger awakened within her. Soon, she finds out that she is a Hellbender, part of an ancient line of beings who have powers and a darkness inside them. Can Izzy confront the secrets of her past, understand her lineage and battle against the growing hunger that lies inside her before it’s too late?
This latest film from the upstate N.Y. filmmaker family The Adams and is written, directed, produced, scored, and edited by Toby Poser, John Adams, and Zelda Adams (The Deeper You Dig) — who also star, alongside Lulu Adams. It’s the sixth feature from Wonder Wheel Productions, the family-run production company founded by Poser and Adams and their children, and the family also produced the music for the feature with tracks from their experimental punk band H6LLB6ND6R.
“It’s a story of a mother who is watching her daughter become an adult. And that is exactly what’s happening in our family,” John Adams told us when we spoke to him about the movie last year. “It’s beautiful and it’s painful, and one of the great things about horror movies is you can take just a regular drama, something as simple as a mother watching her daughter become an adult, and you can dress it up with blood and witchcraft and it just explodes with fun!”
Hellbender will be released on Shudder on 24 February. Read our full interview with the Adams family here.