‘Hell Hole’ Directors Toby Poser and John Adams On Their New Nasty Creature Feature
Renegade filmmakers Toby Poser and John Adams have been making genre films with their kids Lulu and Zelda since they were small. Their low-budget, DIY aesthetics imbued with a love of music have set them apart in the indie horror scene. Often working just within the family, Poser and Adams are now branching out with a bigger production for their latest film Hell Hole, their take on the modern monster movie.
In Hell Hole:
An American-led fracking crew working deep in the Serbian wilderness finds themselves at odds with government-assigned environmental advisors. When they get approval to drill, the workers uncover the unimaginable: a dormant parasitic monster entombed deep in the frozen rock. Now awakened, it tears through the mining facility in search of the perfect host.
We spoke with Poser about filming in Serbia, blowing up (fake) horses, and making their first monster movie.
Dread Central: Where did Hell Hole start for y’all?
John Adams: First, the story came because we were driving from Montana to Alaska and we dropped Zelda off in Calgary. She had a job there. Me and Zelda were going through the fracking camps in Canada. The first iteration [of Hell Hole] was about a fracking camp in Canada.
DC: I was going to ask about that because in your director’s statement, you talked about when you found out you were filming in Serbia, everything changed. I was curious about that and how everything shifted when you got the new location.
Toby Poser: I think for the better because it added an extra tinge of alienation. The Americans are kind of the invaders and then you have a monster invading bodies. And also just that the local lore and the Serbian actors who brought so much to the table was, I think enriched the story.
JA: What was fun was the cultural clashes became obvious. The Americans and Serbians and the French, Russians and Slovenians.
DC: Cool. This is such a big crew compared to what you guys usually do. What was that like for you guys to jump in feet first and do a much bigger project?
TP: I mean, at first it kind of blew me away. I’m one of those people who if you put me in a room without a script, I freeze. So it was a great education. Fortunately, the crew was so cool, so patient, so professional, so lovable. We learned a lot. We often say the kind of films that we typically make, they’re just like this living amoeba. In this case, having structure was a good exercise.
DC: I was wondering about that. I feel like making films with family, you guys can be a bit more fluid. Was there just like you said, more structure or you felt like you had to adhere to more structure?
JA: Yeah, totally. It’s more structured. There are more rules. I think we quickly figured that out and realized, “Oh, don’t shake the big ferry boat.” You know what I mean? Keep it going in a straight line. And I think we wanted to know what it was like. We had grown up together with our girls making movies, and so there were no rules, only whatever we wanted to do. And now we saw what the rules of filmmaking are, and now we get to apply what we want to, but we can still just do it our way, and that was a really nice experience.
DC: That’s awesome. Hell Hole is also one of the first films you’ve done without Zelda in a while. I know that Lulu wrote it with you, but it’s just the two of you directing. What was to direct just as a couple and not necessarily as parents?
TP: Oh man, I was so grateful to have John there with me. At the end of the day, we’d come back exhausted and kind of replaying and because it was so new for us, it was just good to be there to hold each other up. I mean, actually, because we do come from such a renegade way of filmmaking, we could jump in there and run with the wolves. It’s like, “Oh, you need this done fast? No problem.”
So we leaned on each other’s strengths. John’s really good at just impulsively getting shit done. I’m good at making sure the storyline is honored. So it was a really good symbiosis.
JA: It was a fun teamwork. And we have to say that the Serbian actors that we had, without their generosity and without their gentleness and their just great humanness, this wouldn’t have been fun. They were wonderful and they made it really fun. And they were quick on their toes.
DC: That’s so nice. Did you film in the winter?
TP: Yeah.
DC: How was that?
JA: Actually easier there than back home.
DC: Oh really?
JA: Oh, it’s far colder in the Catskills.
DC: I guess that makes sense if I think about geography a little bit harder. [Laughs]
JA: Well, no, I think you’re right. I think they had a mild winter because we were told, “Oh, you’re going to be shooting in the snow.” So, we showed up, and there was no snow. It was almost fall weather.
TP: It was cold, but something that we value in our work was happening there, which was nature. It had the perfect humidity. So when you would talk, you would see that breath. You didn’t need to add or augment anything. I think people act really well when they’re cold.
DC: Yes, that’s so true. In Hell Hole, you had amazing work on the special effects. While you guys have never shied away from gore, you had someone really doing special effects. How was that and what’s the coolest thing you learned from them?
JA: Well, he’s a genius, Todd Masters, and he’s also a beautiful human being that you want to hang out with. And I would say what I learned was a guy of his stature was such a gentle soul.
TP: I was going to say the same thing. It doesn’t even have to do with the technical brilliance, but he’s just the kind of person who will suggest something and make it sound like it was your idea. He’s that generous. He loves people who are just fucking creating and he’s sort of birthing that. But on to his talent and his team’s talent at Masters FX. It was great. And it was fun too, to hear him telling stories like, oh, this was from this movie and this was from that.
JA: He made a monster from all of his monsters for us because he had very little time to put this monster together. And so he took pieces and pieces and put a monster together. Wait,
DC: It’s very much its own Frankenstein’s creation to make your monster. That’s so cool.
JA: One of the things he always said was, he can’t make a living breathing monster, obviously. So we have to film this in a way that it moves. As long as it’s moving real, we stay on it. But as soon as we give up the ghost, there’s got to be a cut. And he helped us with that. He helped us figure that out.
Then Trey Lindsay, our effects guy, was given lots of little tiny puppets so that he could stop motion them. So it was a great combination of Todd’s big real monsters and moving them as best we could, and then getting back to the Catskills and Trey making little stop-motion things and putting those things together. Then we have our monsters blowing up and chasing people and doing all sorts of terrible things
TP: And matching his VFX, Trey’s VFX, with the practical, including two Serbian people from Synergy Effects who did a great job, too, on set, bringing a lot of that gore. They just had buckets of it.
DC: That’s so cool to be able to collaborate with creators like that and see what you can make when you have a bigger team.
JA: That’s right. That’s why we made a monster movie. It wasn’t like, “Oh, let’s make a family drama.” If we’re doing this in Serbia with a whole bunch of people, then let’s make a monster movie.
DC: So you’ve been wanting to make a monster movie.
TP: I think John’s been wanting to blow up a horse with the monster inside probably since he was like five years old.
DC: Yeah, I understand that. And you finally did it. How does it feel?
JA: Great. Took it off the bucket list. The behind-the-scenes stuff would be really funny because a lot of things don’t even make it into the movie. We were blowing shit up nonstop and ruining a very nice camera and things like that.
DC: Have you ever watched those YouTube videos of the guys who shoot bullets at ballistic dummies in empty fields?
JA: No, but I’m going to now.
DC: My husband and I watch them for fun. They’re in a field with a camera that films 80,000 frames per second and they fire bullets and they watch them go through dummies. It’s so dumb. But, it’s also great.
TP: Doodah was the name of our explosive guy and he was so cool. I mean, he exploded stuff in a pond. He’d explode stuff in a horse. He was great. He was just the coolest.
JA: Every morning Doodah would come up, “John, come, we blow up this head on wall for practice.” Great. Let’s go blow up the head on the wall for practice before the double espresso! He was wonderful. “Oh, I make mistake. I fix, we do again.”
DC: Wow. What an incredible experience. So what subgenre do you all want to tackle next? Or what kind of horror movie do you want to tackle next?
JA: We’re already tackling them. We filmed two and we’re just finishing one.
DC: Do you ever stop? That’s amazing.
TP: If we stop, maybe we’ll die.
JA: So we’re having fun. Zelda wanted to get back into things, so we shot two with her and they’re really fun. Which I really, and what’s fun about it, I think the two that we’ve just shot is, it’s kind of the same mental stuff, but kind of a very female take on it and a very male take. So the two movies are tackling a very similar issue, but from kind of different points of view and they’re really fun
Hell Hole is streaming now exclusively on Shudder.
Categorized:Interviews
