There are movies about witches, and then there’s Hellbender, which watches all that “double double toil and trouble” stuff, chugs a shot of blood, cranks the amp to 11, and says, “Cute. Anyway, here’s a song about eating God.”
Made on a microbudget by a real-life family (John Adams, Toby Poser, and their daughter Zelda Adams), Hellbender is the kind of DIY horror that feels like it was grown in the woods rather than produced in a boardroom. It’s lo-fi, occasionally rough around the edges, but so weirdly confident and alive that it ends up feeling more powerful than a lot of slick studio witch movies.
Also, it might make you feel guilty about eating chicken. So. Fair warning.
Home-schooling, but make it occult
Izzy and her mother live way out in the woods, fully off-grid except for trips to town and the occasional three-chord apocalypse they write together for their mother-daughter metal band. On the surface, it’s kind of wholesome:
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They make music together
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They forage for food
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They hike and hang out in nature
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They’re deeply, suspiciously vegan
It’s like if Little House on the Prairie got rewritten by Black Sabbath and funded by Etsy.
The catch: Izzy isn’t allowed near other people. At all.
Mom tells her it’s because she has a severe autoimmune disease and could die if she’s exposed to others.
In movie language, that translates to:
“You are either secretly a monster, or everyone else is.”
Spoiler: it’s not “everyone else.”
One worm, big consequences
Izzy’s isolation gets cracked open when she runs into a teenager, Amber, near their remote home. Amber’s everything Izzy is not: social, relaxed, and familiar with the concept of doing stupid things for fun and peer approval.
Izzy gets invited to a “party,” which is really just:
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Teens in a big house
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A pool
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Mild alcohol
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The ancient rite of “Dare you to eat this disgusting thing”
That thing ends up being a worm. Izzy, eager to prove she’s not an alien, eats it.
Bad move. Great cinema.
The worm triggers a visceral, trippy awakening in her—hallucinations, strange sensations, and the first flare of the power her mother has spent years trying to keep buried. Mom finds out, and her reaction isn’t:
“Ew, that’s unsanitary.”
It’s something closer to:
“Okay, cool, so you just licked the fuse of an ancestral bomb.”
From there, the movie shifts gears from “overprotective mom drama” into full-blown supernatural coming-of-age nightmare.
Hellbenders: Not your cottagecore witches
Mom finally comes clean:
They’re not human in the way everyone else is. They’re Hellbenders—an all-female lineage of ancient, supernatural predators who are:
“A cross between a witch, a demon, and an apex predator.”
Which is honestly an excellent LinkedIn bio.
Their power works on one brutal rule:
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They feed on fear, especially fear of death
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Eating a living thing gives them power
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The more complex the creature, the more power they get
You can see where this is going.
Mom has been living like a sort of supernatural vegan monk, carefully limiting her diet to avoid losing herself:
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Foraged plants
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Insects
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Mealworms as a treat (which is somehow way more upsetting than the murders)
Izzy, on the other hand, reacts the way a lot of teens do when they realize they’ve been lied to their entire life:
“Cool, so I’m a god-eating death witch and you’ve been feeding me salad?”
She starts experimenting—first with forest animals, then with bigger prey. The more she eats, the more powerful and confident she becomes, and the less she resembles the timid, sheltered girl in band tees.
It’s like a horror movie about puberty, only instead of worrying about acne, you’re worrying about accidentally devouring the soul of a hiker.
Motherhood, but make it existentially horrifying
The best part of Hellbender isn’t the witch lore (although it’s fun and refreshingly different), it’s the relationship between Izzy and her mother.
They’re not just:
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Parent and child
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Mentor and student
They’re also:
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Bandmates
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Co-artists
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The only people in the world who truly understand each other’s nature
That makes their dynamic far messier and more interesting than the standard “mom hides secret, kid finds out, yelling ensues.”
When Mom talks about control, it’s not just about power—it’s about not becoming the worst version of yourself. She knows what Hellbenders are capable of. She knows what she herself has done. She knows what’s coming for Izzy if she fully embraces it.
And then the movie drops one of its best, darkest reveals:
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Hellbenders are matriarchal
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They live a long, long time
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They reproduce by consuming their mothers
That’s not just twisted for shock value; it’s thematically perfect. The whole movie has been about:
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Where does your identity end and your mother’s begin?
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How do you separate who you are from what you’re born into?
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What’s the cost of growing up when power and violence are literally in your blood?
Here, the answer is literally:
To become fully yourself, you eventually have to kill and digest the person who raised you.
Subtle? No. Effective? Very.
The aesthetics: DIY witchcraft that actually works
Because this is a low-budget family production, you might expect it to feel small or amateurish. Instead, it feels… intimate and weirdly handcrafted in the best possible way.
Some highlights:
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The woodland setting feels both beautiful and eerie—nature as church and hunting ground
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The trippy visuals during power surges and hallucinations feel like occult music videos
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The metal band sequences are genuinely fun, with Mom and Izzy performing like they actually enjoy making noise together
There’s a vibe of:
“We had a camera, a forest, some paint, and a vision. And we meant it.”
The CGI is sparse, and when it does show up—like Izzy’s full Hellbender form—it’s stylized rather than polished. But it fits the tone. This isn’t a Marvel witch; this is something older, weirder, and more feral.
Izzy’s evolution: from sheltered kid to apex nightmare
As Izzy leans into her nature, her arc is both exhilarating and quietly terrifying.
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She becomes more assertive
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She stops accepting her mom’s rules at face value
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She experiments with power, morality, and autonomy
You want her to break free and live her life…
But also she’s literally tunneling under the house to keep a teenage neighbor as a secret food source, so let’s just say the girl is not exactly heading toward a stable college experience.
Her calm explanation to her mother that the neighbor is safe “because I’m not ready to be a mother yet” is chilling in the most offhand way. It turns parenting into this looming biological inevitability—not about babies, but about the cycle of devouring and inheriting.
And then she casually takes to the sky in full monstrous form, like a demonic coming-out party.
There’s something darkly funny about it, too:
Every parent fears their teenager will outgrow them and leave.
In Hellbender, that anxiety just has sharper teeth.
Why Hellbender rules (and bites)
Is it perfect? No.
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The pacing is occasionally loose
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Some scenes feel like vibes-first, logic-second
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A few moments of acting and dialogue wobble a bit
But it has what a lot of bigger horror films don’t:
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A strong, weird personality
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A clear thematic spine
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A genuinely unique take on witchcraft and female power
It’s:
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A coming-of-age story
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A mother-daughter breakup album
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A meditation on inherited violence
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And a metal music video about eating your problems
If you’ve ever wanted a horror film where:
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The “witch” mythos actually feels fresh
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The family drama cuts deeper than the gore
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And the climax is less about banishing evil and more about accepting just how monstrous you might be
…Hellbender slithers right into that sweet spot.
It’s not just “good for an indie.” It’s good, period—sharp, strange, and just self-aware enough to let you laugh nervously while it chews through the idea of family, one generation at a time.
