Hellhole (2022)

Hellhole | 3.5/5

Written by Noah Dietz: 3/15/2025

Truly these past few years have been a wonderful time for me specifically in regards to religious horror (and film in general). Between The First Omen, Midnight Mass, The Ghovie (more boringly known as Ghost: Rite Here Rite Now), Conclave, and many others there’s been an abundance of fun Catholic aesthetic stuff coming out. I’ve been having a blast jumping into more of this area of film, which is what made me check out Hellhole (alt. Ostatnia wieczerza) in the first place.

After a quick opening scene where a priest is stopped from killing an infant who has a strange birthmark, we move 30 years in the future. Militiaman Marek (Piotr Zurawski) has been charged with finding a missing woman in the area, and anonymous sources have pointed to the local monastery/sanatorium as the potential source of her vanishing. After infiltrating the cloister, Marek witnesses an exorcism he later learns was faked for his benefit. This and other strange occurrences lead him to conclude the woman he’s searching for is here, but whether that is enough for his investigation or not becomes a moot point when he discovers the doors of the monastery have been locked.

Unfortunately things can be a little murky for the first half. I checked against my computer monitor and that was a little better, but if you try to watch this in any sort of light you’ll have a difficult time. That being said, the world conveyed here is dark, cold, and uncaring. From the moment Marek steps into the monastery you feel the energy of the place. This is truly where my frustration lies with Netflix and their inane devotion to avoiding physical media. I have little doubt this would look better without the unavoidable streaming compression. Mileage may vary on your TV, however, so don’t let this point hold you back too much.

Some have said the early parts of the film—even up to two thirds of the film—are boring and by-the-numbers religious horror. I can’t fully fault that read since there’s a lot that can be enjoyed, but nothing much that’s groundbreaking. That said, I can’t overstate how worth your time it is to watch this just for the final 20 minutes. Everything crashes together in a mess that, even if you saw it coming, still looks great and sticks the landing in ways you would never have expected from the rest of your time with the film.