A real-life mother and daughter bond over blood magic in the occult horror film Hellbender

It’s time for a new kind of family band, and the Adams family (no, not that one) may be the bohemian clan of oddball creatives the world is looking for. For the last decade and change, married couple John Adams and Toby Poser have been collaborating on films that bring their entire family into the DIY moviemaking process. The first few were dramas, but over time the focus shifted to horror as youngest child Zelda, now 17, became more active both behind and in front of the camera. Zelda shares writing and directing credits with her parents on their latest film, Hellbender, which will expose the Adams family to its widest audience yet when it premieres on Shudder.

Zelda and Toby also co-star as Izzy and Mother, who live in a restored farmhouse in upstate New York that was previously seen in the Adams’ last production, ghost story The Deeper You Dig. Izzy has been “on the mountain” since the age of 5, and Mother refuses to let her come along on trips to town, telling her daughter that she has a rare immune disorder and could die if she gets too close to strange people. The two eat a foraged vegetarian diet, and spend their time making art and practicing songs for their (honestly pretty righteous) hard-rock band, H6LLB6ND6R. But Izzy is getting older, and more curious about life beyond the small patch of land she calls home.

One day, Izzy sneaks out and stumbles onto a party being held by some local teenagers, who dare her to swallow an earthworm as part of a drinking game. She does it, of course—eating a worm is nothing compared to social exile when you’re 16. But that little gesture turns out to be a very big deal. The tiny invertebrate’s life force awakens Izzy’s latent powers as a Hellbender, a commanding natural force she later describes as “a cross between a witch, a demon, and an apex predator.” Hellbenders take the form of human women, but are immortal and reproduce asexually. They draw their occult strength from blood and fear, and exist outside the boundaries of human morality—which is why Mother has been trying to delay Izzy’s transformation as long as possible.

But now it’s here. And so Mother begins to educate Izzy in the dark power of their shared lineage. The occult elements in Hellbender are unique, an organically conceived style of folk witchcraft that’s heavy on blood, herbs, and Blair Witch-style sigils made of sticks and bark. But the film’s thematic content—a cauldron of maternal fear, adolescent frustration, creation, destruction, isolation, and troubled family histories—is in the same category as horror films like Relic that tease out the monsters lurking in mother-daughter relationships. Izzy and Mother are hardly a typical pair, however. How many moms and daughters do you know who get high on maggots and spit blood in each other’s faces as they laugh hysterically?