Interview: Hellbender cast/crew Zelda Adams, John Adams, & Toby Poser

In Hellbender, a mother and daughter live a secluded life surrounded by lush forests, the music they create, and a dark family secret. A spontaneous act of rebellion opens a door that forces the family to confront their past as well as themselves. Prior to the film’s February 24th release on Shudder, Zelda Adams, John Adams, and Toby Poser sat down to chat with Joe Ferry from BGH. Here is the full interview with the cast/crew of Hellbender.

 

BGH: I saw your film during the NightStream Festival and you were at Fantasia before that. What was it like running your passion project through the festival circuit and now getting ready for a big distribution on Shudder?

Zelda Adams (ZA): We love the festival circuit so much. I'd say a large percent of the reason that we make movies is so that we can go on the festival circuit after it 'cause it's just so fun. We love Fantasia and everyone a part of it and then also you get to meet so many other great film makers and great audiences and then you get to watch great films too and get some inspiration and learn a lot. And now we're really excited for Shudder. It's just such a great opportunity where every day like we look at each other and we're like, “Is this happening? Is this happening?”.

BGH: Well, it's so nice that you guys have that connective family experience with not only creating the work, but also getting to see it displayed out to the public. And that ends up kind of being one of the themes. Zelda, especially with your character, asking the question “if we make art and nobody sees it, is there a point?

John Adams (JA): Actually, I wanted to be a rock star. I grew up on Hardcore and those guys made me realize you could do things yourself and you could have an effect. Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Bad Brains, all those bands were my heroes. And then as I grew up, I had the rock and roll dream. But I never got the success that I dreamed about. In looking back, though, everything that happened was just perfectly beautiful. So, my dreams were fulfilled even though they weren't actually my dreams. Now there was a point where I was a little frustrated because I was like I don't like it, just I'm… I'm sleeping on dirty ass couches that smell like piss and like I would love to just sleep in a bed once. You know what I mean? And play music. My friend was like, “just keep doing it if you love it, don't try to start writing music for other people. Write music for you.”, and I remember when he said it. You know when someone says something, it drops like a truth bomb, and you know it's 100% correct. That was a great truth bomb that just blew up. And so that's referenced in that movie. Which is the answer to me is, if you play music in the woods and no one hears it, you're still playing music, and it's beautiful.

BGH: I love that. Now the band Hellbender was a bit before the movie. How long have y’all been playing music together?

ZA: We've been playing music together for a really, really, long time. We've just kind of gone through different band names. I used to play drums when I was a lot younger, and John and I had a band called Kid California. And then I got more interested in singing and so did Toby and Lulu. So that's where H6llb6nd6r (all of the e’s are sixes) was created. A couple years ago, we started making music videos and we were making our song Black Sky. We made some interesting editing mistakes and that kind of sparked some inspiration for the movie Hellbender we were like, “Oh my God, we need to make a movie out of this.”. Interestingly, that the movie kind of originated from our band.

BGH: Who is makeup artist in the family?

Toby Poser (TP): We all were. We just had an idea about what we wanted to do and we were very limited with colors. I think we had black, red and white. And it's funny because at the time, we weren't thinking so much about thematically what the makeup meant.  But then after the film was made, we realized, “Oh my God”. This is one of the perks of kind of wearing every hat in the production, because you just kind of intrinsically get a feel for what everyone is about. And so, each scene music, the makeup really does have some metaphorical punch. But we all had did our own.

ZA: Yeah, yeah, it's fun though because right before each of the band scenes it was a lot of like, alright, what should the makeup be? What should I be wearing again? It's not like something that, we planned ahead on, which I think, it worked out really well, being spontaneous with our thoughts.

JA: Yeah, the only thing we did plan was the very first set of makeup. She [Zelda] has tears and the Mother has X’s on her eyes so it's like it was supposed to be foreshadowing. And after that it was all just us. Just having a really great time. We did shoot one sequence with makeup that we actually didn't like, so we had to reshoot it, so it wasn't all just luck. We did a whole scene and looked at it, like this is great, makeup sucks. So, we redid the makeup.

ZA: Storyline-wise though, I think it's sweet because they're still doing like makeup, even though there's not an audience to be dressing up for. They're making fun the best they can on a little mountain.

BGH: No, it definitely gives that like that presentation of loving the art itself. The crown, which is interesting and symbolic, did y'all make or find it?

JA: Yeah, we made that crown and it was really important to us. Just like you know, it's insanely symbolic and it's looks like it's filled with dried blood. Yeah, so it was really important. And then Toby wrote it into the scene on the steps we had made it. We weren't quite sure what we were going to do, but Toby was like, so this has to the be in the scene on this in the steps.  And she wrote it in. She is really good at making circular stories and she put that in there and it became insanely important. And then once we did the step thing, we shot the intro to the movie where she sees it. So that was an example of art first, story second.

 

BGH: And you get that great scene on the steps. Toby presents Izzy with the crown, she goes to first put it on but then Zelda takes it out of her hand and places it on her head. In between that moment and the blocking throughout the movie, how important were those intrinsic power dynamics to the relationship of the two characters?

TP: I think they're crucial. For me, my favorite part about watching movies is trying. It is trying to really find the little almost subliminal moments, you know. So yeah. And then eventually, we see Zelda is wearing the crown in that third music segment where she's like, “I'm a motherfucking mountain”. You know, it looks like a mountain with the peaks. It's like something out of Mordor. Yeah, it was. It was very important.

ZA: That's what we love about the horror crowd so much, is they pay attention to the little details. So, we love sprinkling in little Easter eggs and foreshadowing events. And it's really fun when they recognize it.

 

BGH: One of the things that jumped out at me, and I am not a car person, but that beautiful red Mustang.

JA: Well, that's our car. The kids grew up in it. It needs some help. It's a 1968 Mustang. It basically broke down in the middle of the movie and was going to be in a lot of the movie. But we couldn't afford to fix it. So, it didn't star in as much of the movie as we had hoped. But yeah, that was always our car until we made a couple pennies and then we got a Subaru. But yeah, we love that car and in fact our next movie, which is called When the Devil Roams, we're using my dad's 1931 Chevy because it's set in the ‘30s and his ‘31 Chevy runs better than my Mustang. It is a beautiful car.

 

BGH: There's something about those old engines, like, the simplistic design and it's easy to replace parts.

JA: Oh, absolutely, and the other thing is, is they have an exceptional smell? I notice like the kids aren't used to the smell of those old cars and when Zelda got into the Chevy, she was like this smell is amazing and I'm like, yeah, that's gasoline. It's awesome.

 

BGH: Back to your dad. I noticed in the credits that he's the man in the shop that recognizes Mother. With the three of you filming together and Lulu, how important was it to have that be a cohesive family not only in story but in production? And was that impacted at all by COVID?

JA: Our movies and our life there, there's not a huge separation in our family between making movies, playing soccer, going to the beach, and working on whatever. And so we have Toby’s mom in our movies. We have my mom in movies, we have our nephews. We have our dad and part of the reason is so that for the rest of the life we can look and say, “hey, there's my dad and there is my aunt and there's my nephew”. They're little diaries.

TP: Yeah, and I'll be honest, it's also very convenient. When you make art, the way we make art, which is basically living in art kind of intertwined. I call it a beautiful symbiotic beast. It's pretty convenient when you can ask your mother and father-in-law, “hey, would you be in our film?” and an hour later you can be shooting them. So, it's a beautiful convenience. And sometimes, just people who aren't actors have something very raw and natural that we really like to capture.

 

BGH: You can definitely feel the intimacy come across on the screen. Zelda, the relationship between your character Izzy and Amber, played by your sister Lulu, is contentious at best. What was your favorite part of playing into that dynamic?

ZA: It's actually really interesting because my character says, you know, like “I can't get close to you” and it's interesting 'cause that's how I felt in real life, on a physical level. We were social distancing while we were making this movie because we were in different bubbles and John, Toby and I were taking COVID really seriously for health reasons. And then Lulu had come to upstate New York, but we needed to film with her. So, we're like we're going to make this happen but we're not going to get close. It was that scene where I go up to her and then pull the chair away. It was just a natural reaction. I was not trying to breathe the same air as her. It was kind of fun. but you know otherwise, I really think Lulu was like portraying a kind of level of herself. She's a very bubbly person, it was nice having that bubbliness in a kind of darker movie.

 

BGH: It speaks to the you folks balancing things really well. How did you manage to get moments of brevity and lightheartedness, but not lose the existential dread?

ZA: Yeah, I think using Amber's character as well as the music, was our pathway to having a balance between fun and darkness. What do you guys think?

JA: I think that's really well said Zelda. Humor is insanely important to us. It's not knee slapping humor. We were just talking about how it's one of the traits of the Adams family is, we laugh when people get hurt and that cannot be good. Within our own family, it works really well, “Ha-ha-ha, you did the scorpion, it was hilarious, looking. I saw you twist your ankle or fall on the ice.”.  Toby just wiped out on the ice. And I had to try not to laugh.

TP: Ha, try.

JA: Yeah, so anyway, humor is really important to us. It's very nice when we're sitting in an audience and people laugh at, what we think is funny. And sometimes it's a little disconcerting when nobody laughs at something we think is funny 'cause then we're like, “uh-oh OK.”. Ha, We’re psycho.

TP: Yeah, I feel like laughter and horror are the sexiest bedmates. I mean, they just go together perfectly. One alleviates the other, one fuels the other, and anytime we can achieve that in our films, we're like, “ah, thank you, glad that worked.”.

 

BGH: Yeah, it can be a delicate balance, but I think y'all pull it off really well. I have a weird question, there's a scene you manage to have two characters, essentially vomiting blood on each other’s faces. How did you make that feel so wholesome?

TP: Hahaha well honestly, it just was so much fun. I mean, besides being cold. It's fun to like, be rolling around in the snow with your daughter with chocolate and strawberry syrup and brown rice in your mouth. And puking it all over your kid. How many moms get to do that?

ZA: I was just telling them it was a bonding experience within this story, but also just filming it as well. And that's like a day that I'll never forget. It was horrifying, but fun and weird and just surprising. Toby makes the homemade blood with a range of different syrups, and since there were supposed to be like maggots in the blood, uh, she put little rice bits in it and maybe something else. But I didn't know this, so when she threw up on me like my mouth was open a little bit and I got some of that like texture in my mouth. I was like, “well, what in my mouth!”. When something enters your mouth, you expect one texture and when you get something else, it's terrifying. It's like biting into soup and then tasting something hard. It's like what's going on. So that was a terrifying but fun experience.

JA: Yeah, it's a brutally wicked, nasty scene and those two pulled it off so fun. It was important to the movie because hellbenders thrive on blood and the whole thing is built on blood and the fear that runs through blood. But what's great about that scene is in that, it's the joy that's running through the blood, and that's what separates a hellbender from a human is that right there. So that scene was important to us.

 

BGH: Yeah, and that mythos is interesting because the hellbender is a mixture of a witch, a demon, and an apex predator. Where did you pull inspiration from in order to craft that creature.

TP: We loved reading about historical powerhouses like Lilith. I especially loved researching the Libyan serpent God, Lamia, who was eating babies for power. And then Kali the Destroyer, who has men sticking out of her teeth and bones all around her? Those things were just a blast. In the end, we really wanted to be sure that we created something that was original. We only wanted to mention that word witch once. Yeah, we just had so much fun. But those were some inspirations.

JA: It was important for us that the audience gets to ask themselves who gets to sit in the seat of judgment and why? And it's like, with a hellbender and a human, there's different seats of judgment. So, if you're a hellbender, shouldn't you be the best hellbender you can be? And I f you're a human, you know, what do you then think about a hellbender? So, it's fun. Hopefully the audience gets to sit and ask themselves that question, which is, “how do I judge these characters?”.

 

BGH: Yeah, I definitely think there's a level of empathy that you end up feeling for Izzy and even the Mother who is in an incredibly tough situation trying to protect one she loves, but also knowing the horrors that come along with their nature.

JA: Yes, totally.

 

BGH: It looked like y'all filmed in a bunch of different locations. How did you pick your settings with the environment being so key to the story?

ZA: It's kind of like nature tells us where to shoot to be honest. A lot of it is, maybe like 60% of it is filmed in upstate New York just right in our backyard. You know, we'll go out and it'll be a beautiful day and it's just asking us to be filmed. This was shot right when COVID started, so I was all online for school, so we bought a truck and a trailer and just traveled around America. We went to very beautiful cinematic places, like, the coast of Maine. But especially the coast of Washington and Oregon, where the kind of rainforest there matched up with the forestry in New York. So, we just went on a lot of bike rides and hikes and would kind of scout beautiful places that we could film in. We spent a lot of time just wandering the woods together, finding the right place to film. It was fun. It was a fun experience.

JA: It was a magic. I'm glad we have it on film.

 

BGH: With the release on Shudder at the end of the month, do you guys have a physical release for the movie possibly lined up?

JA: Shudder is going to do a physical release and there it's going to have you know, outtakes. It's going to have a whole bunch of extras, and we've been working with them on that. And it's really cool that they're putting so much work into it. We're also putting out a vinyl album. Which is fun. Well, we're not putting it out., a company called Ship to Shore is putting it out. And it's cool because I think there's maybe 9 or 10 songs in the movie. But we had written 23 songs for the movie, so all those songs are going to be there. It's a super fun soundtrack that we’re very excited about. It was fun to do.

 

BGH: Now, you said you have another project that you're already working on.

JA: Yeah, we're like 70% done shooting our next movie. Zelda, did you want to tell it 'cause it's Zelda’s story idea? And as soon as it left her mouth, we started shooting it 'cause it was just perfect.

ZA: Ha, yeah, we had just finished Hellbender. We gotta start thinking about our next idea. But anyway, it's a story about a family. And this is the first time we're going to be playing a family together, the father, mother, and daughter roles. It's about a peculiar, artistic serial killing family on the carnival circuit. And when they're not doing their carnival act, they're committing some robberies and murders. But something really bad happens and the daughter is left to pick up the pieces. It's kind of a mix between Bonnie and Clyde and Frankenstein and it takes place in the 1930s. Kind of like we said before, we're using a lot of like what we have accessible to us. Like, my grandpa's old 1930’s cars. It's been really fun.

JA: Yeah, one of the things that we you know we love going to festivals we love talking to people we've become all of us have become kind of fascinated with body horror and organic horror. That's something that we're really trying to excel at in this movie and we just want to do a super genuine job on the honesty of physical horror. So, that's a lot of fun.

 

BGH: What are some of your favorite body horror movies that you may pull inspiration from?

TP: I don't know if I could say that this has inspired me, but I loved the film that was out last year, Titane. Going with her and what she does to her body. You know on purpose or not, is just so cool.

JA: Yeah, we just watched old Frankenstein and I was blown away by his [Boris Karloff] acting as Frankenstein. It's stunningly good and it was just so inspiring. The movie ended we were like, “oh my God. Let's try to be as genuine as him.”.

ZA: Yeah, I think body horror wise we gained inspiration from Raw but also the movie The Golden Glove. We saw it at Telluride for the first time a couple of years ago. It's this German film and if you haven't seen it, it's just, oh my God, you should watch it. It's really dark and just has a lot of yeah.

JA: It's brutal and vicious and dirty, and it's not fun at all, but it's freaking genuine.

ZA: Yeah, and we kind of want that genuine dirtiness in our next film, so it's a big source of inspiration.

Hellbender is currently streaming exclusively on Shudder.