espresso bongo: May 2023

It’s a wonderful feeling when your faith in an idea long dormant is restored. I recently experienced such a restoration after watching the Polish horror film Hellhole on Netflix. There is a segment in this film that shamelessly borrows a visual motif from The Witch, Robert Eggers' arthouse masterpiece of 2015. But the self-conscious way it uses such elements reinforced the usefulness of a concept I had personally consigned to my mental trash bin: postmodernism.

In fact, comparing The Witch and Hellhole is a good way to differentiate modern from postmodern style. Doing so, you (re)discover what was (is) great about postmodern art in the first place: its ability to accommodate feelings that don’t normally fit together. In the case of Hellhole, the mixing disgust with hilarity.

The borrowing between Hellhole and The Witch doesn’t involve plot or setting. The earlier film is staged in colonial times and involves a family attempting to settle the American wilderness. The forest is full of witches, who the daughter eventually joins to worship of the Devil. Hellhole is set in contemporary Poland. It tells the tale of an undercover detective investigating a monastery in connection with a missing persons case. The detective eventually becomes possessed himself.

Authentic vs. Inauthentic

One of the qualities that makes The Witch so compelling is its authenticity. Director and writer Robert Eggers devoted years to researching his subject matter. He read diaries of the time (circa 1630) to match belief systems and diction. The cabin in the film was built according to architectural notes and other documents from the Smithsonian. This finely detailed realism achieves a historical consistency that makes you feel like you’ve been transported backwards through a cinematic time machine.

Hellhole, by contrast, is historically discordant, and, at times, comically inauthentic. Though set in modern times, the monastery locale is a throwback to medieval Europe, closer to a ruin than a place inhabited by living beings. It’s a mini-universe that reeks of decay. Such a setting is appropriate for a set of rituals and beliefs that seem absurdly out of step with the times. The monastery is almost like an exorcism factory, churning out one after another. And it’s a profit center—the Vatican pays them by the possession. To add to the weirdness, we eventually discover the monks are worshipping, rather than exorcising, the devil and that cannibalism is a key part of their rituals.

The films, in short, couldn’t be more different—except for one striking scene. Both movies end in a similar way. In The Witch, the lead character, filled with the demon’s powers, joins the band of witches in the woods, in a dance in which they all levitate in a circle together. In Hellhole, the monks of the monastery, now under control of their demon, also levitate and, in their case, are suspended upside down. Like in The Witch, the monks’ levitation is accompanied by spooky voices and music—and there is enough similarity to the scenes that it seems like Hellhole is paying tribute to this earlier possession flick.

The visual imagery, though, is where the similarity ends. In The Witch, the scariness of the scene is mixed with a kind of release, even pleasure: as tragic as the story is (the young protagonist’s family is killed), you feel relieved she is freed from the oppressive puritanism of the film. The monks’ case is different: you feel they get what they deserved for all their ghoulish cannibalism. When they levitate, they are turned upside down along with the crosses in their monastery—an image in keeping with the carnivalesque overturning of belief systems in the film—where good becomes bad and holy profane.

But the most significant difference of all between the two levitations is that The Witch’s version is completely serious, while Hellhole’s is rather funny. This is because, in the case of Hellhole, there is a scene right before this one, that subverts its genre—and ultimately, the religious belief systems it plays with.

A Conjuring Gone Wrong

The premise of Hellhole will be familiar to anyone to anyone who has seen Rosemary's Baby or The Devil's Advocate. A group of devil worshippers, in this case the monks of this weird monastery, wish to assist Satan’s appearance and conquest of the world. In the case of Hellhole, we discover that the detective investigating monastery is destined to be the body/soul the demon will use to facilitate his return. Bringing this about involves a ritual that requires cannibalism, blood drinking and the reciting of blasphemous invocations. Two monks meticulously accomplish all this in front of their order. However, when they do so, nothing happens.

In this scene, the movie abruptly shifts tone, from scary to comic. The monks look puzzled, beginning to seem like a couple of fuckups. The spooky and pompously solemn aura of their ritual becomes undercut by the mundane quality of their self-doubt. “Did we forget something?” one monk asks. “I don’t know,“ the other replies, “there aren’t any instructions [pointing to an ancient book], just some notes.” The monk goes on to suggest that perhaps they interpreted the instructions symbolically when they should have been literal. “It’s not possible,” the other monk counters, adding: “We sacrificed seven innocents, one for every cardinal sin, and the eighth was even a virgin!” “You said this would work,” one monk mutters. “Oh, so you’re blaming me now,” the other shoots back.

Finally exhausted by all the finger pointing, one of the lead monks announces to the perturbed congregation: “This may have been a mistake; let’s act like nothing happened. After all, we meant well.”

This truly funny scene brings the whole film down to earth. It makes the plot and the genre itself seem ridiculous. This is why the levitation scene and the horror tropes that accompany the end of the film seem more a tongue-in-cheek exercise than anything you’d take literally. In this sense, the film is the diametrical opposite of The Witch.

And, rather than merely a kind of nihilistic joking around as some postmodern art is accused of, the absurdity of Hellhole serves as a tool of political critique. Eastern Europeans filmmakers, whose cultures have suffered through Fascism and Stalinism, are probably especially aware of the dangers of powerful “master narratives.” In this context, Hellhole might be read as a questioning of the overweening power of the Catholic Church, whose political influence is significant in Poland (a fact alluded to in the film). The obsession with ritual throughout the film and the decrepit setting suggests the whole edifice is out of date.

More than that, the heretical theology the film invents offers a cutting comment on dangers of any ideology if it gets too influential. If one wonders why Catholic monks would conjure evil personified, the rationale is provided near the end of the film. The head monk states:

“God and the Devil sit side by side. They have an understanding. Always have. Since the beginning. But the Devil is not evil. People are. They deserve to be punished. And punished they shall be.”

In the context of the film, it’s hard not read this statement as a classic postmodern comment: any ideology, even one that preaches the good (don’t they all?), is liable to turn into its opposite if it becomes too powerful. The result: rather than helping people, it punishes them—and the pursuit of the good goes hand-in-hand with evil.

The image we’re left with at the end of this film makes this point in a striking way: freed from hell, the first action the demon takes before enacting his mayhem is to pray to a crucifix.