Hellbender trailer: coming-of-age horror film reaches Shudder in February

Back in August, we heard that the occult coming-of-age horror film Hellbender would be released through the Shudder streaming service in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand sometime in early 2022. Now we know the exact release date – it’s February 24 – and a trailer has arrived online along with the release date announcement. You can check it out in the embed above.

Hellbender is the sixth feature film from Wonder Wheel Productions, a company formed by Toby Poser, John Adams, and their children Zelda and Lulu. Poser, John Adams, and Zelda Adams wrote and directed Hellbender together, with Zelda taking on the lead role of

16-year-old Izzy, who suffers from a rare illness that has kept her isolated on a mountaintop with her mother (Poser) her whole life. As Izzy begins to question her sickness, she pushes back against her confinement and secretly befriends Amber (Lulu Adams), another girl living on the mountain, but her newfound happiness is derailed after she eats a live worm as part of a juvenile game and finds an insatiable and violent hunger awakened within her. To understand the hunger, Izzy must learn the dark secrets of her family’s past and the ancient power in her bloodline.

The Adams family also scored the film with tracks from their experimental punk band H6LLB6ND6R.

I haven’t watched a movie from the Adams family before, but Hellbender definitely looks like it’s going to be worth checking out. I will be watching this one in February. Will you? Let us know what you think of Hellbender by leaving a comment below.

The previous Adams family productions were Rumblestrips, Knuckle Jack, The Shoot, Halfway to Zen, and The Deeper You Dig. Most of them are listed as dramas on IMDb, but The Shoot and The Deeper You Dig are both labeled horror.

Here’s a poster for Hellbender: