Hellmington Review: This Under-The-Radar Thriller Surprises And Entertains

The new thriller Hellmington might sneak up on you and give you a surprise if you make the effort to seek it out. Having been quietly released this past week on DVD and VOD, it stars Michael Ironside and Nicola Correia-Damude in what seems like a typical police procedural that later ends up involving a local cult and also a corrupt ring of cops and prison guards, just to keep things interesting.

Correia-Damude stars as Sam Woodhouse, a big city cop who returns home to tend to her ailing father. He dies almost straight away, but has a rather curious set of last words. He utters the name of a long-missing teen and former classmate of Sam’s, Katie Owens. Sam starts investigating the cold case, but many of the town’s denizens would rather leave that particular skeleton in the closet. One of those people being her uncle and the town’s police chief, played by Michael Ironside. Sam has to fight tooth and nail if she is to try to unravel the mystery behind the decade-old disappearance, and even fight off people bent on not only ending her investigation but also her life.

Hellmington contains many a layer to its story that peels away throughout its unfolding. Just when you think you have the slightest idea whodunnit, it pulls the rug out from under your feet. All leading up to a big ol’ whopper of a Shyamalan twist, it keeps you wrapped up in its story and wondering what new surprise will come next.

First-time feature filmmakers Justin Hewitt-Drakulic and Alex Lee Williams do a bang-up job keeping the audience guessing with their film’s unpredictability. Despite its obvious low budget, they give it a sheen comparable to the best of TV’s police procedurals, a la Law and Order and others of its ilk. They also draw good to great performances out of their unknown, to me at least, cast and get a predictably solid turn out of genre mainstay Michael Ironside.

For a film I had no expectations for going into it, I was pleasantly surprised by Hellmington. Nicola Correia-Damude makes a suitably good impression in it as a lead, and its co-directors have a nice calling card if they should want to get into episodic TV directing, which more and more movie directors are doing these days, for better or worse.

Recommended if you liked: Law and Order, Cold Case, CSI

FINAL GRADE: B-

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