Hellhole (2022)
7/10
When Satan comes, lilies bloom
7 November 2022
Jacob Boehme, a mystic from Silesia - the area where the monastery (Lubiaz) is located where the film was shot - named the expected time of "the rejuvenation of the world" the Time of the Lily. In Catholicism, lily is a symbol of innocence and Virgin Mary.... yet in the more esoteric circles, it is also a symbol of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, like Satan banished by God - in her case, to the desert. As often in the case of Christianity, meanings are bestowed upon the older pagan symbols, reversing them yet raising the question which meanings are the real ones. Here, the well descends to Hell ("Hellhole"); in the Old Testament a well is associated with the beloved of Jacob, Rachel; in Judaism a woman comparable to Virgin Mary, whose name, maybe surprisingly, maybe not will be the last words of Satanic messiah during sacrifice. Likewise, the most knowledgeable in the matters of the cult of the Prince of Darkness in this movie is a monk named after a man who set up Christianity as a religion.... Peter. He will betray the Satanic messiah in the way original Peter betrayed Christ, finally both enabling and completing the sacrifice of Satan's Chosen One, in the end so akin in his fate to Jesus Christ.

The appearance of lilies, rather untypical for cinematic stories about devil, is an example of how well versed in the occult this movie is... In this gripping story of ritual, human sacrifice, cannibalism (the original Polish title is "The Last Supper/Ostatnia wieczerza") and deceit (of his own worshippers by Satan is the last one), the Son of the Dawn (reversal again) is the only winner, even his earthly followers paying price: perhaps they never paid enough attention to the wisdom which says that "No one really knows what the World to Come shall look like". This movie says it will be the great Reversal again, high up to Sky - As above, so Below - to remind one of occult tenets, again somehow present in the Catholic Oratio Dominica prayer ("in caelo et in terra").

The knowledge this movie conveys (up to the pattern of thyrsus on the ceremonial robes of the high priest of Satan) in a way is more terrifying than multitude of slashers inhabiting only the realm of fiction.
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