Coming-Of-Age Horror ‘Hellbender’ A Twisted Mother-Daughter Tale For AMC’s Shudder, Preview
AMC Networks’ Shudder has a new addictive coming-of-age teen event, Hellbender, making Stephen King’s classic teen horror film Carrie look like a wholesome mother-daughter yarn.
Isolated, 16-year-old Izzy lives on a lonely mountaintop. Like Carrie, she too has an overprotective mother and kids in the lowlands who view her as odd.
All that she has learned is from her mother and the extreme visions and enigmatic events in the wilderness that follows them.
Izzy wants to socialize with kids her age, but her mother thinks she’s afflicted and needs to be alone with her.
Questioning her illness and curious about what lies beyond her home and hungry for normal friendships, Izzy sneaks down the mountain where she connects with Amber. Izzy thinks she has a new group to call friends until a twisted drinking game with a live worm changes Izzy for the bad.
About the coming-of-age tale, Hellbender
In Hellbender, teenager Izzy (Zelda Adams) has a rare autoimmune illness that has kept her alone on a mountaintop with her mother (Toby Poser) her entire existence.
But time has Izzy questioning the nature of her sickness, and she rebels against her confinement and explores beyond the dark hollers and hills. She meets and befriends Amber (Lulu Adams), who lives on the mountain.
All is well and seems promising until the others in Amber’s group taunt Izzy to eat a live worm in a twisted teen drinking game.
What happens next is that evil is unleashed as an “insatiable and violent hunger awakened within her,” as Izzy now learns the hard way why her mother had her hidden and the power she possesses.
Hellbender creates a stir worldwide.
Hellbender had its world premiere at the 25th Fantasia International Film Festival in August 2021. The sixth feature film written and directed by the filmmaking Adams family is Toby Poser, John Adams, and their daughter Zelda Adams.
The series won Best Actress, Best Score, Fantastic Fest at the Sitges [Catalonia, Spain] Film Festival and Chicago International Film Festival.
Zelda is cast as Izzy and took home the Best Actress award at the Fantasia International Film Festival.
Toby Poser, John Adams, and Zelda Adams (The Deeper You Dig) wrote, directed, produced, scored, and edited Hellbender. John Adams and Toby Poser are married and Zelda and Lula Adams are their children.
AMC says:
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.
Hellbender streams now on Shudder.
