HELL HOLE 2024 | RECAP | MOVIE REVIEW | ENDING EXPLAINED
Today I am going to explain and recap a recently released, movie called hell hole. The movie is set in an Eastern European country called Serbia in 1814. We see two strained Neapolitan army soldiers on the verge of starvation wandering in a jungle for food. They encounter a Serbian woman who hands them a horse with a creepy smile. These guys then bring that horse to their pals where one guy opens up a knife to kill it. As the horse sees the knife, it explodes from within and some sort of creature emerges from it which starts to chase these guys. Now the movie starts in the present day, where an American oil fracking team is at the same location to dig for oil. It is headed by Emily, an entrepreneur who is here after her sustainable solar panel business went belly up. So, she took a 180-degree U-turn to make money from polluting the earth. In her team, we have Jhon who is a self-obsessed idiot, who has absolutely no interest whatsoever to be here. These guys are stranded in a place where the overflowing river has blocked their way, to the nearest city. Here two ecological scientists Professor Nikola and his assistant Sofija are on the field to make sure that an endangered species known as Pika doesn't get harmed in any way. It is rumoured that these rabbit-like animals are in abundance but there is no conclusive evidence about it. Sarja has DNA testing equipment with her to detect their presence, from organic material. The entire portable lab is established on the site exclusively for this as the Serbian government is taking this way too seriously.
Next, we see this guy Teddy who is the nephew of Emily and a cook on the site. His exotic American dishes were driving these people crazy as they were demanding simple editable food but this guy was cooking many fancy foods for their taste. This guy shows some crush towards Sofija and John jokes she is above his pay grade. Since she had two degrees and doing a PhD under Nicol. After conducting a thorough DNA survey at the site Nikola and Sofija found no evidence of Pika's habitat being here. They gave their green signal to drill and decided to leave this place. But since the roads were blocked they were also stuck here like the rest of the crew. Sofija also shows some crush towards Teddy which surprises Emily.
Now she and her Serbian crew start digging. To their surprise and shock barely a few metres in they got a very stinky organic material spelling out. They didn't know what it was but it had a very strong smell. As Nikola starts to examine it, Sofija leaves with Teddy to dispose of the crash on the other side of the site. These two now start to talk where she says her goal in life has always has been to study the behaviour of parasites. How they grow, evolve and adjust to the environment, especially to the host bodies. Teddy on the other hand wishes to be a cool Dad with kids and enjoying life as it comes. Upon closer examination of the material Nikola, says this is no bunny. It is entirely a different thing. At the same time, these guys hear screaming noises coming from the earth as if some animals are under it.
Teddy with the help of a crew member called Danko, starts to dig a trench to dispose of his kitchen waste where he finds a shocking thing. The same French guy whom we saw at the beginning was buried underground in some sort of organic layer. Teddy quickly screams for Emily and others. As these guys start to examine it, the French guy shockingly opens his eyes and comes out of it, in a rather dramatic fashion. He then begins to scream for help in French. This shocked the crew as they were not expecting this. Here only Teddy could understand him as he took French for one semester and he was sucking at it.
Emily halts the drill till this issue is sorted out. She has no clue what to do next as this is a police case and Serbian authorities are on the other side of the river. Nikola, Sofija and teddy were trying to make some sense out of this French guy. They gave him some water and his old French was going above his head. Nicole observed him for any physical head injuries or any other abnormalities but there were none. The guy was relatively healthy. Just then a parasite-like creature crawls out of his nose and then moves back in which scares Nicola. He asked the other two whether they saw it. but unfortunately, they didn't see anything.
When Emily arrived to check on them the French guy somehow understood she was the boss and in rather a peculiar way he made a gesture to decapitate his head. This surprises everyone, Nicola took Emily and Sofija outside to discuss what he saw. Apparently, here the French guy was stinking like hell and the same stinking smell was coming from the drill hole. Sofija says there might be some connection between the two. In the lab, they had the equipment to do the DNA test. For some sick reason, Nicola was very happy and excited to see something new. I mean, how the hell did this guy survive?
Nicola and Sofija took blood samples and DNA samples of this French guy. John holds him tightly here, which scares him a little, because of this once again a parasite-like thing comes out of his ears, which everyone sees and gets scared of. Emily again tries talking with this man, but he still insists on decapitation. Hence, Emily locks him there and asks everyone to stay away from him. The oil extraction stops until the police arrive.
After some time, Teddy makes bread toast for the guy and John, after getting permission from Emily, goes to feed him. This French guy at first eats the bread but as soon as he sees John's knife, he again starts making gestures of cutting his throat. He starts to plead, to kill him. When John refuses to do so, he attacks him and snatches the knife to kill himself. Just then another force from within him started stopping him, which was very strange. No matter how much he tried, he still couldn't kill himself. Then a parasite-like thing comes out of his eyes, ears, nose and mouth, which John also sees and scares the hell out of him. When he starts to strangle him, the parasite attacks him. It comes out of this French guy and jumps into John's body directly. That French guy's body becomes like a 200-year-old mummy.
John does not understand what happened. He goes and calls Emily and Teddy and lies here. He says I gave him a sandwich and went out to pee and when I returned he was in such a state. Emily is shocked to see this and wonders how could this happen, how can a living man become a 200-year-old mummy in just a few minutes? All the crew members had seen this guy alive today, if they saw this mummy then she would be in trouble legally. One thing to notice here was that the smell that was coming from that French guy was now coming from John's body. So Emily sends him to take a bath.
Nicola and Sofija returned with their test results and both of them looked very happy. It seemed as if they had found something very big. Hence they are a little disappointed to see the dead body. Sofija starts explaining what is happening. She says we tested the skin samples of that guy under a microscope and found out that his cells have evolved from his human cells. His body cells are made up of a mixture of two types of species, there is a nucleus inside the cell which shows that another organism is growing inside him. Both organisms are completely symbiotic. This means there is a parasite inside that French guy, which can live for years. By analyzing the DNA, we have also found that the DNA matches with an octopus named Argonaut found in the sea. Now Sofija explains the reproduction process of this Argonaut octopus and says. Whenever Argonaut needs to have children, the male octopus goes out and throws one of its tentacles inside the female. The female creates an organic shell around it, till the eggs get fertilized. After that, a new octopus is born. Sofija believes here that there was a similar octopus inside that French guy. Which is born from the union of a human and an octopus. This means a baby man Argonaut hybrid octopus which now needs a man's body to survive. This is a completely new species. Sofija and Nicola were very excited that they had discovered something unheard of till now.
Jhon in the other room explains all that had happened to him to his buddy Christian, who laughs at him. He says there is nothing inside him, to prove his point first he asks him for an arm wrestle. When that fails he starts to beat him to provoke him. Here the parasite inside him gets provoked and attacks him, due to which he falls on a table and dies from blunt force trauma. John is shocked to see all this, he now drags Christian's body to dispose of. After some time two guys Danko and Filip arrived at the same place where John was dumping the body. Filip in a panic points a gun at him thinking he killed Christian while Danko tries to stop him. In a scuffle, Filip fires it which rebounds and kills him instead. Seeing this the creature inside John escapes while exploding him like a tomato. His blood spills all over Danko who is shell-shocked seeing this and quickly he too gets infected by this creature.
Like the French guy, Danko too starts to kill himself by shooting. But just like before, the octopus inside him stops it, every time. This time Emily and her crew saw this first-hand, Danko hands over the gun and begs her to shoot. He narrates the story of what had happened with Jhon, Filip and Christian. The crew gets scared and restless, seeing this. They believe Danko is cursed because he unearthed the French Guy, and caught some sort of virus which is making him crazy. They were eager to do what he wanted, since this is a Balkan state, laws were lucid on killing. But Emily and Teddy were hoping for a way to save him. Nicola and Sofija now argue as Nicola believes Danko must save this creature and provide nourishment till it grows to leave the body. Whereas Sofija sees it as a parasite. The argument that all creatures have the right to life doesn't quite fit well here. Nicola was comparing this with this. Emily finally takes the call, she gives her go-ahead to the crew to finish off Danko in the wilderness. This site is at least 30 km away from the nearest city, and the creature needs a male body to survive. If these guys kill Danko and no man is available to jump for it then there is a chance that it could die. Teddy was not sure whether what they were doing was the right thing or not, as the creature was just trying to survive. Sofija eases his dilemma by saying all creatures have the right to life but not at the cost of a family man.
The crew took Danko deep into the wilderness and shot him. Just like John, the octopus escapes by exploding Danko and starts chasing men. It hops one guy after another who all die in a mutual shootout to kill it. Finally, it ends up with Luca, who returns to the base where Emily and others are getting ready to leave. He explains to them what had happened and he too decides to kill himself by drowning. Nicola here again tries hard to save this creature but Luca terms him as a nutcase. He slowly moved into the water and swam up to a certain distance to make sure it died there but alas it's a baby hybrid octopus. As Emily and others were watching, it quickly reached the shore and jumped onto Nicola. This guy who was asking others to save it now all of a sudden starts begging Sofija to kill him. I guess, only the bearer of the child knows the pain. Sofija stabs him and cuts off a tentacle before running from there with Teddy. After Nicola's death, the creature attacks Emily and then starts chasing Teddy. In the final shot, we see Sofija with Teddy in a hotel room where Teddy is scared like hell. The newspaper says all the crew members had died in a mysterious accident. With this, the movie ends. As one can guess, the creature is now inside Teddy and Sofija is studying him while thinking what to do next. Teddy always wanted to be a dad, so like Nicola said once the baby gets old it might leave his body in one piece. Or may live inside him forever. Sofija got her ultimate test subject but we know where she stands on this. Eventually, she will kill it. This is an average creature horror movie, a genre that is extinct to some extent. This movie too seems like covid era film with a limited crew and a limited budget.
