The Adams Family carries filmmaking in their bones, and that deep appreciation of the art form is immediately recognisable onscreen. The family – made up of Toby Poser, John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Lulu Adams – began making films together around 10 years ago, as well as creating music with their punk band H6llb6nd6r. Often shot around their home and local area with a modest budget, The Adams' have graced us with genre offerings such as The Deeper You Dig, Hellbender, and Where The Devil Roams that, while all unique, contain the family's signature flair for the dark and deranged. Less than a year on from the release of their latest film, Hell Hole, The Adams Family is back with Mother Of Flies, which might be their greatest work yet.
After being diagnosed with cancer, Mickey (Zelda) is visited by a healer, Solveig (Toby), in her dreams and turns to necromancy when conventional medicine fails her. Mickey's father, Jake (John), is skeptical that Solveig can help his daughter, but goes along for the ride in desperate hope, journeying to the deep woods to meet Solveig at her remote home. She guides Mickey through her ritual free of charge, but that's not to say the transformative experience comes without a cost as Mickey and John realise as soon as it's too late.
From its staggeringly beautiful yet shockingly raw opening scene, Mother Of Flies is a cacophony of terrifyingly sumptuous visuals blended with a droning soundtrack and looming sense of dread that is compelling and repulsive in equal measure. It's a mastery of practical effects and design, with each scene appearing straight out of an oil painting with every intricate detail lovingly thought out by its creators. Its imagery – from lush flora and fauna contrasting vivid red gore – lends itself exquisitely to the balance of birth, life, and death that is threaded through the film's narrative. Born from the Adams' own experiences with battling and surviving cancer, Mother Of Flies is a sensitive look at the lengths we will go in the face of our mortality, and what we can lose of ourselves in the process. It's extraordinarily personal and raw, and a topic handled expertly through its storytelling and powerhouse central performances.
Haunting, moving, and painfully beautiful, Mother Of Flies revels in the grotesque of the human body and decay, while celebrating birth and new life in its wake. Through its poetic monologues and intimate moments between characters, we are put under a spell by this world of witchcraft that, from the jump, we know is not what it seems, but desperately want to believe Mickey can be well and her family unit can be happy. The charisma of the Adamses seeps into their writing with ease, creating complex characters with grey morality in a fairytale world equally dark and shadowy. With each revelation, it becomes increasingly difficult to trust each character and the world around them, building a nerve-shredding tension that never eases.
Mother Of Flies will put a spell on you, conjuring genuine magic before your very eyes. It's an enthralling piece of art that consistently pushes the boundaries from its opening scene right to the very end via the complex and intimate relationship its characters have with birth and death. It's a raw, bloody, and magical masterpiece that is the culmination of more than a decade of genre filmmaking for the Adams Family, and one that will be hard to forget.
Mother Of Flies has its world premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival on 24 July
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