Helstrom - General Discussion

[starri]

Quote

“Marvel’s Helstrom” is based on the comic “Hellstrom,” which centered on Damion Hellstrom, aka the Son of Satan.

In Hulu’s version, Daimon and Ana (who goes by Satana in the comic) Helstrom are the son and daughter of a mysterious and powerful serial killer. The siblings have a complicated dynamic as they track down the terrorizing worst of humanity — each with their attitude and skills. “Marvel’s Helstrom” is also executive produced by Zbyszewski — who will serve as showrunner — and Loeb.

[AnimeMania]

Shouldn't the title of this forum be Helstrom, not Hellstrom.

[starri]

I honestly have no idea.  The character name is spelled with two "L's," and I've seen both referring to the show.  I guess we can make a final determination when we get official images and a logo.

[paulvdb]

Everything I've read about the show has the show name and character names with one L. I've only seen double L when referring to the comic.

[paulvdb]

‘Marvel’s Helstrom’ Cast Revealed

[AnimeMania]

‘Marvel’s Helstrom’: David Meunier To Recur In Hulu Series

David Meunier will play Finn Miller, a part of a secret organization that handles work not for the faint of heart.

[AnimeMania]

 

Marvel Terminates Pair of Showrunner Overall Deals (Exclusive)

Marvel has terminated deal with Paul Zbyszewski showrunner for Helstrom. Helstrom was able to wrap physical production before the industry-wide shutdown. 

Edited April 22, 2020 by AnimeMania

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Comic Con is going to be free online this year due to COVID-19 so everyone can see the Helstrom panel! It hasn't been assigned an official timeslot yet so be sure to check the Comic Con website in the next week or so!

Quote

Helstrom
As the son and daughter of a mysterious and powerful serial killer, Hulu's upcoming Marvel Television series follows Daimon (Tom Austen) and Ana Helstrom (Sydney Lemmon) and their complicated dynamic, as they track down the worst of humanity -- each with their own attitude and skills.

 

[paulvdb]

"Helstrom" - Comic-Con@Home Panel & Teaser Trailer

Quote

All episodes premiere Friday, October 16th

Teaser:

 

[paulvdb]

Trailer:

 

[starri]

No Marvel branding on it at all.  I guess this is their way of shutting down Marvel TV with a whimper.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 9/26/2020 at 8:06 AM, starri said:

No Marvel branding on it at all.  I guess this is their way of shutting down Marvel TV with a whimper.

Disney say it's because they don't want to associate the Marvel brand with the horror-genre content, but that's silly. It just makes it less likely that people who like that sort of thing will go on to read Marvel comics, and they should want as many demographics of readers as possible.

[AnimeMania]

This is out now on Hulu. The first episode was a little slow, but the rest of the episodes managed to hold my attention. I made it through 5 episodes before I decided I should get some sleep.

Edited October 20, 2020 by AnimeMania

[yourmomiseasy]

I cant decide if it is me or if the mixing is way off on this show.  I have to turn it way up so I can hear the dialog, but then the music is scary loud.

[rove4]

I just finished the season and I agree that the first episode or two was a bit slow but it doesn't take long for the show to hit its stride.  I really enjoyed it and there were a few jump scares along the way. 

[AnimeMania]

Helstrom: A Superficial Study 

I thought that the story was good, not great, but satisfactory. It seemed to make sense without contradicting itself. The rest of production needs to be kicked up a notch. The setting of Portland made everything dark and dreary to create an atmosphere that I think the show took to an extreme. While everyone is dressed in drab clothes, the show needed some big splashes on color to remind me that the show was not filmed in Black and White. The lighting is dull, there are few brightly lit scenes, the few well lit areas were the mother's (Victoria) demon coma scenes and the sister's (Ana) warehouse scenes. There weren't many jump scares in a story about demons. One place were color and jump scares were used effectively was in the crash on the highway scene. The fire was big, bright and colorful and they did a jump scare to Close-To-Nun (Gabriella). For future episodes, the show needs more color, bright scenes and jump scares.

Boy is Ana tall and skinny, they try to make her seem irresistible to people of all sexes, but I am just not feeling it. She is not bad looking, so I don't know why it is so uncomfortable to watch her try to seduce people. Gabriella is the person we are supposed to identify with as we learn about this world that is filled with demons. Unfortunately she is boring, uncool, headstrong, always needs saving and never gets a win. The only thing going for her is her compassion for people. Speaking of compassion, the show fails to show people's humanity to balance out the demon's ruthlessness. The show tends to skimp on humanity and only shows you the demons. Horror works best if you can see a little of people's goodness before you turn them into demons, a great example of this was the Priest turned Demon. The show seems to be wimping out on the special effects, a lot of the murders seem to happen off camera. The scene of the Frat Boy turned demon was an example that didn't work, we knew absolutely nothing about him since we didn't see any of him or the party, before the Frat Boy wakes up under a pile of dead bodies. A party would have been a bright, colorful, joyful, humanizing way to show people and a massacre would be full of jump scares and murder special effects, but they skipped over the good parts straight to someone being a (snooze) demon. The Frat Boy scene also had me confused as there was no context for what was going on and they had to fill that in much later and there still wasn't any payoff.

The sets are amazing in how unamazing and normal they are. The only interesting spaces were Ana's warehouse. Even the brother's (Daimon) office held no interesting Demon Artifacts that might seem even a little out of place. Daimon's house does have that Roman Chariot Statue on the dining room table. The special effects are well done, but subdued, they need to be more ambitious and flashy in future episodes. 

[AncientNewbie]

I'm so old 50% of my takeaway from this was "Jack Lemmon's granddaughter!" (Or, Chris's daughter, if you were a fan of certain early Fox sitcoms. I loved Duet for unknown reasons.)

I found the dialog almost inaudible at times and had to ride the volume button to both hear and avoid waking the family at every commercial.

The show itself...would watch another season if the Disney gods relented. It wasn't perfect, but it fit within the strictures of the similar MCU versions of day-to-day superpowers from Netflix. Something about Gabby's tale still feels forced, but I can pretend that's what would be explored more in season 2.

[tennisgurl]

Its really too bad that this show was a victim of the great MCU TV purge, as well as the block of horror themed MCU shows that had planned to go with it. I am a few episodes in and while its not game changing or anything, I like it quite a bit. Good atmosphere, the acting is solid, and while Helstrom isn't a comic that I am really familiar with, they seem to be hitting a lot of the right notes, as much as budget will allow anyway. There are changes of course, usually to try and ground the show more in some version of reality, like the Netflix MCU shows, which I am often kind of mixed on. I always cheer to add more heavy supernatural stuff to any comic book adaptation that features it, but I can see why a show that it trying to be dark and gritty would be unsure about naming its female lead Satana like in the comics. Its a bit on the nose. 

[MissL]

I enjoyed it enough to be sad there won’t be a second season.

Was anyone Else bothered by how much BACK and forth there was with locations? Like stay still people and quit splitting up! One minute they are at the hospital and then they are back at Daimon’s place and as soon as someone leaves they call them and are like “where are you we need you BACK here.” So frustrating. Some of the actions of the characters made me yell at the tv.
 

Questions on final episode below look away if you haven’t watched yet:  

And when Yen And Ana go after Daimon and Gabriella why do they split up? She’s like “you get her and I’ll get him” but they didn’t know where they were and at that moment Daimon and Gabriella were actually in the SAME place.  Was Ana thinking she’d draw him off? Just made no sense to me.
 

And that last shot of the crib at family dinner made it look like the baby was gone and the next shot Yen has her so...are we supposed to think he took her? To raise her in a nurturing environment? But wouldn’t she be better off with a Dad, Aunt, grandma and whatever the heck keeper and Dr. Hastings are?  
 

and Skinner As dad! Yes please. Dammit I want a second season. But when he said let’s go see your brother and sister did he mean someone else?  because Daimon is kinda her dad and...oh gross. 

[AnimeMania]

On 10/24/2020 at 10:48 AM, MissL said:

But when he said let’s go see your brother and sister did he mean someone else?

According to all the websites I read, he meant Daimon and Ana.

[dwmarch]

I enjoyed this show although if it wasn't a Marvel property I probably would not have watched it. I'm not really into horror. Although aside from a single reference (a Roxxon gas station) there were no other hallmarks of Marvel here. Too bad because I would have indeed liked to see this series cross over with Cloak and Dagger or Runaways or Agents of SHIELD. Does anyone know if there will be a second season of this?

Elizabeth Marvel did an amazing job with her roles here. I didn't find President Keane to be a compelling character on Homeland but of course she didn't have the opportunity to express her full range there.

Ana's wardrobe was amazing. I loved pretty much all of her outfits although I thought her high-waisted pants would look better with a belt.

Speaking of wardrobe, I got a laugh out of Gabriella adding a biker jacket to her wardrobe to show that she wasn't one of the good guys any longer. Does The Blood issue leather jackets to new members or did she have to go out and buy it? Maybe she already had it from back in her party girl days but I think it's funnier to imagine her all furious shopping for something to show the world that she's not gonna take it any more.

I also loved that Yen snapped back to reality when the keeper tried to get him to eat the dead spiders. When he picked one up, I said "he's not going to eat one is he?" and I was relieved when he spit it out. It was the show being gross for the sake of being gross, which I don't think was necessary.

The rules of the demon world did not make a whole lot of sense to me. Why does the keeper's skull have an eyeball in it? How did the eyeball end up in Yen's throat? If Daimon is part demon, how can another demon just be grafted onto him? If it's because of the little demon-mouth-thing that he had put into his back, why was he the only one who needed something like that for possession? Does a demonic mark have to be something specific or can it just be a simple cut like Gabriella had? How is it that a demon child can be born from a half-demon and a possessed human? And why would this demon child be so well behaved?

Also, Kithara sounds appropriately demonic. Spawn of Satan that was micro-brewed like Daimon's finest kombucha? Your actual name is Lily. Okay...

That hospital had much more of an open-door policy than it should have had. At first it's a big deal when Daimon wants to talk to his mother but by in later episodes everyone just comes and goes from that cell as they please.

Dr. Hastings had that kind of cancer that you can get rid of by random injury. I would have preferred if they had tried to explain the extraordinary luck there as some cosmic balancing of the scales since Kithara gave it to her.

I didn't know much about this show going in so I was surprised when the backgrounds of "Portland" started looking really familiar. It was filmed in Vancouver.

[MisterGlass]

I've been watching this slowly.  It was fine, but things never completely gelled for me.  It feels like this could have used some 'case of the week' episodes to establish ground rules, and saved demon babies for season two (or never).

I had trouble connecting to the main characters.  The actors weren't bad, it's just that what was happening felt forced a lot of the time.  Victoria, Hastings and Yen were interesting and entertaining.  Robert Wisdom kept making me think of Supernatural.

The effects were good for what this was, the set design was good, and clearly effort went into it.  It just lacked a spark.

1 hour ago, dwmarch said:

Your actual name is Lily. Okay...

I presume that means she's Lilith. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 10/26/2020 at 9:12 PM, dwmarch said:

Does anyone know if there will be a second season of this?

It hasn't been stated officially yet, but since Marvel Television has closed shop, everyone's assuming there won't be a second season and that the first season was only completed because it was already in production when that happened (Marvel Television people stayed on to finish it). We can hope Hulu and/or Disney's new Marvel Studios would take over and produce a second season, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Anela]

I liked the first episodes more than the last. I don't really like shows about demons. 

[UnknownK]

There are plenty of articles saying the show was unofficially canceled before it even aired. 

[AKA...CJ86]

Finally caught up and watched.

It was dull. D-U-L-L...

The good... I liked the opening/title sequence. And whatever was happening in the closing moments of the season finale was more interesting than anything during the season. That I liked.

Loved the cast. But I hated all of the characters. Maybe minus Hastings, everyone (or thing) were shades of unlikable.

Of Marvel Netflix/Hulu shows, I'd rank this last probably, which might say something if I'm putting Iron Fist ahead of this. 

I guess we have the Disney+ Marvel shows to look forward to.

 

[AnimeMania]

'Helstrom' Canceled at Hulu

[Bruinsfan]

On 10/26/2020 at 8:12 PM, dwmarch said:

I also loved that Yen snapped back to reality when the keeper tried to get him to eat the dead spiders. When he picked one up, I said "he's not going to eat one is he?" and I was relieved when he spit it out. It was the show being gross for the sake of being gross, which I don't think was necessary.

His reaction to that reminded me of this skit from House of Buggin':

Job Interview with the Vampire

Edited June 21, 2021 by Bruinsfan