Setting themselves far apart from most of the indie/DIY horror scene that focuses on squeaky exploitation thrills and slasher stuff (not that there’s anything wrong with that), the Adams Family (no, not that one) has been quietly making their own brand of low-budget spooky stuff for years. Comprised of husband and wife John Adams and Toby Poser and their two daughters Lulu and Zelda Adams, they collaborate on almost every aspect of their homebrew filmmaking process, from writing to editing to even creating the music (mostly courtesy of their metal band H6llb6nd6r). Their films may not be the most exciting on the market, but they do tend to be more thoughtful and sometimes even more poignant that what usually hits the festival circuit.
Their latest, Mother of Flies, is no exception, though the crew may be getting to the point where it’s time to expand their horizons into something more elaborate. Here we meet Mickey (Zelda) and her obviously concerned father Jake (John), who are on their way to somewhere in upstate New York. There they hope to find Solveig (Poser), a witch who Mickey believes can cure — or at least stave off — her resurgent and likely terminal cancer. Jake is skeptical, especially when they meet the witch, who speaks in odd platitudes about death’s inevitability in nature and who lives in a giant house consumed by trees — a terrific matte composite effect, by the way — with no running water or heat or any other everyday amenities. Mickey, however, is not only willing to try anything, even this last resort, but she may be on her way to truly believing what Solveig has to offer.
Evidently taking some inspiration from the family’s own experiences with illness, Mother of Flies takes a pretty calm approach to its horror, leaving the more overtly scary elements to surface in flashbacks that fill in the blanks of Solveig’s backstory while the main narrative focuses on Mickey’s relationship with her new… let’s say, therapist. Mother and daughter of course have a relaxed but occasionally diffident chemistry, which gives their sometimes meandering conversations about mortality just the right dose of confrontation. John Adams, meanwhile, who often takes the lead in these projects, plays the earnestly worried dad well enough, but is here game for taking the backseat — this is undeniably a show for the two women.
Mother of Flies tends to lose steam as it rolls toward a climax that you’ll see coming a mile away, but clearly the project here is an ultimately hopeful rumination on death and acceptance. If there’s genuine disappointment here, it’s that the family is so clearly capable of marshaling few resources to make resonant, visually adept, well-written genre stuff, and so hopefully this film’s success (it won a prestigious award at its festival debut at Fantasia) will lead the Adams Family to something bigger and a little bolder in the future. The results of a big budget and vast resources could produce astonishing results.
Published as part of Fantasia Fest 2025 — Dispatch 6.
Comments are closed.