Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hellhole’ on Netflix, A Superb Chunk Of Horror Tropes, Satanic Gloom And Gleeful Sacrilege

Poland might not be well-known for producing horror movies, but don’t tell that to Bartosz M. Kowalski. The director and writer’s 2020 film Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight and its resulting sequel both blended scares, gore, bloodsoaked comedy, religious satire, and meta horror self-awareness, and now he’s back with Hellhole (Polish title: Ostatnia Wieczerza, or The Last Supper), which goes all the way in – or all the way down the well – on genre horror filmmaking and skewering the bombast of Catholicism.  

HELLHOLE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: It’s 1957 in a remote part of Poland, and a distraught Catholic priest is pulling an Omen, racing to a church altar to try to kill an infant whose skin bears a particular mark. Is the baby Satan made flesh? The clergyman seems pretty sure of it, but he’s shot and killed by police before he can certify it with his ancient dagger. 30 years later, Marek (Piotr Zurawski) arrives at a rambling collection of church buildings set amidst rain, slop, and the call of crows; a tree in the courtyard looks like the twisted souls of the damned. Marek is greeted by Prior Andrzej (Olaf Lubaszenko), who shows the newly assigned priest around the monastery’s gloomy corridors, candlelit sleeping chambers, and cells that house the tormented. “The Evil One often manifests his presence,” the prior says with a weird undercurrent of nonchalance. 

His cigarettes are confiscated, and a henchman-like monk named Dawid (Rafal Iwaniuk) searches his belongings. But they don’t find the secret compartment in Marek’s case, the one that includes a pistol and a flashlight, or the lock picking tools secreted in his rosary. For Marek isn’t a priest at all, but an undercover police officer sent to investigate a string of womens’ disappearances linked to the monastery. And Marek’s pretty convincing in his rough-hewn habit and penitent air, until the prior challenges him to lead daily prayer in Latin. And don’t get us started on meal time, where mystery meat stewed to the consistency of sewage is slopped into moldy steel bowls.

Between vomiting violently and discovering strange passageways and alcoves located in the monastery walls, Marek is also given a front row seat to an exorcism performed by the prior and his aide Piotrek (Sebastian Stankiewicz). The latter also warns Marek that his snooping has been detected. Not taking any chances, he loads his pistol and stows it in the folds of his soutane. But when the monastery’s true nature finally emerges from the omnipresent gloom, any earthly protection feels puny and insignificant.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Hellhole already had Prince of Darkness vibes, dwelling as it does on a monastery located at the epicenter of Satan’s pathway to earth. But then the priests break out the Camcorder that documents their exorcism rituals, and Hellhole also starts to channel the queasy VHS visuals of John Carpenter’s ’80s horror classic. Consider also The Wicker Man – we’ll stick with the 1973 folk-horror original here – where another cop with a plan to locate the missing makes unexpected contact with Christianity’s devilish flipside.

Performance Worth Watching: As Andrzej, the monastery’s prior and chief holder of secrets, Olaf Lubaszenko lets his face measure barely perceptible shifts between menace, paternalism, evil, hope, sadness, and – ultimately – confusion. “I was supposed to be the Devil’s disciple, and fuck all happened.”  

Memorable Dialogue: Here’s a little blurb from Hellhole that illustrates how little compassion Bartosz M. Kowalksi and co-writer Mirella Zaradkiewicz have for the precepts of Christian dogma. “God and the Devil sit side by side. They have an understanding. Always have. Since the beginning. But the Devil is not evil. People are. They deserve to be punished. And they shall be punished.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing doing on the former, but you can count on an eyeful of rotting flesh and unclothed corpses. 

Our Take: “Ominous, gruesome, satanic” – don’t sugarcoat it, Netflix descriptors! Hellhole oozes with horror movie atmosphere from the second Marek is dropped off in the middle of nowhere to begin his investigation, and doesn’t let up until its deliciously sacreligious final few minutes. Creeping dread should also be added to that list of descriptors. In Hellhole, there’s never any doubt that deceit and darkness dwell underneath the superficial layers of a monastery’s daily harmonies of life. But it delights in delivering feints that engage with the heady genre filmmaking at work here. The preponderance of buzzing flies that scatter out of Jesus’ eyes. Crucifixes of the watchful kind, the upside down kind, and the bursting into flame kind. (But watch that last one for trickery.) And the consistent influence of body horror over the film’s candlelit proceedings, as Marek forces himself to consume the scummed offal in his bowl, pulls loosened molars from his mouth, and is later force-fed four servings of chum. And don’t forget about a would-be exhumation in the church graveyard that only reveals more questions. 

It’s fun to engage with all of these misdirects, and to be led deeper and deeper into the monastery’s mysteries by the quietly determined Marek. (Piotr Zurawski only needs a few full lines of dialogue to illuminate his character, whose inner turmoil is his greatest weapon against the forces at work here.) And when it’s finally time for the big reveal – you knew it was creeping up, unseen but not undetected, in the shadows of religious architecture and secret tunnels descending beneath altars – Hellhole has the courage to fully and monstrously adhere to the prophecy of its own making. After all, it was said more than once. “The Chosen One shall devour seven sinners and drink the blood of an innocent one.” Didn’t anyone notice the human cranium used as a blood chalice perched next to Jesus in the refectory rendered by Leonardo da Vinci?  

Our Call: STREAM IT. Packed with dread, gloom, and the machinations of Satan’s faithful here on earth, Hellhole is a wholly rewarding horror film with a healthy respect for the genre’s time-honored, sometimes stomach-turning stylistic tropes.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges