In short: Hellhole (2022)

Original title: Ostatnia wieczerza

Warning: given the twist-heavy plot of the movie, I’ll have to spoil at least a couple of them!

Poland, 1987. A priest named Marek (Piotr Zurawski) joins a Gothically creepy looking monastery clearly far away from the next city to help out in the place’s main business. Officially, the place is a sanatorium for the mentally ill, but in truth, the monks there are specialized in exorcisms, and everyone inside not wearing a cassock is possessed.

Apart from this open secret, the place has quite a few rather more hidden ones, and our protagonist clearly feels very uncomfortable there very soon. Of course, he has some secrets of his own, for in truth, he’s not a priest but a cop and has come to the monastery undercover, looking for a number of women who have disappeared in the area. If you believe a number of anonymous letters, the monks have something to do with these disappearances. Marek’s first discovery is, however, something else: the monks are only faking the exorcisms with the help of drugs and technology. Which certainly isn’t going to be the last surprise he’ll have; things are going to get a bit more personal.

Bartosz M. Kowalski’s Netflix movie Hellhole hasn’t exactly been a hit when it comes to its critical reception. That’s not a complete surprise, really, for after a fast and furious beginning – the exorcism is pretty spectacular – the film quickly settles into a groove of slow mood building, and not much else. Because characterisation is mostly perfunctory, there’s at first not terribly much to hold onto as a viewer apart from the fine monastery set and the thick mood of creepy Christianity. The audience, like the protagonist, is slowly fed a series of curious, inexplicable things to chew on without much explanation; the film asks for quite a bit of patience, perhaps too much for many a viewer.

However, all of the seemingly random elements actually do belong together, and the final act turns into a series of increasingly bizarre and wonderfully macabre twists that may be preposterous, yet also compelling, fun and more than just a bit bonkers. I found myself having a huge amount of fun with these revelations, as well as the film’s increasingly sardonic sense of humour – there’s a bit connected with a somewhat disappointing ceremony that’s absolutely perfect. Then the final five minutes happened, and I found myself absolutely in love with the visual language used as well as Kowalski’s willingness to just go there.

Which certainly doesn’t make Hellhole a perfect movie, but if you bring a bit of patience with you, it may very well reward you with blowing your mind just a little bit in the end.