One of Their Most Visceral Visions Yet
Mother of Flies
MOVIE REVIEW
Mother of Flies
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Genre: Drama, Horror, Fantasy
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 32m
Director(s): John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Writer(s): John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Cast: Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, John Adams, Lulu Adams
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Fantasia Film Festival
RAVING REVIEW: MOTHER OF FLIES is a return—and a reckoning. With this latest experience, the Adams family doesn't just go back to their roots; they dig them up, twist them, and expose every worm underneath, burying it with rocks. John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser once again write, direct, and star, continuing the familiar filmmaking style that’s defined their work: the family that slays together, stays together. It’s never clearer than now how much that bond shines through on screen. But this time, the stakes feel more personal, the horror more real, and the artistry more purposeful.
Zelda Adams plays Mickey, a young woman recently diagnosed with cancer and who is growing more desperate by the day. When conventional medicine fails her, she turns to necromancy in a last-ditch attempt to reclaim control of her fate. Her father, Jake, played by John Adams, reluctantly supports her journey, willing to follow her anywhere—even deep into the woods to meet a mysterious woman named Solveig. Solveig, portrayed by Toby Poser, offers ritual, darkness, and maybe salvation. But her guidance, steeped in old magic, comes at a price.
While past Adams Family films like HELLBENDER and THE DEEPER YOU DIG flirted with fantasy and metaphysics, MOTHER OF FLIES dives headfirst into the abyss. This is their most unapologetically gruesome film to date, filled with graphic sequences, ritual bloodletting, and confrontations with mortality and a physicality with practical effects. And yet, beneath the gore is a kind of eerie calm—an almost meditative cadence that allows the weight to settle.
The cinematography and editing—also handled by the family—lean into this contrast. Moments of visceral horror are intercut with long, silent stretches where the forest seems to breathe, or where characters simply exist in the rawness of their grief. That balance between graphic horror and restraint gives the film its edge. This isn’t shock horror. It’s grief rendered through myth, pain ritualized through fairytale, and death treated as both villain and inevitability.
The family’s chemistry, as always, is one of the film’s greatest assets. You can sense the comfort they share onscreen, which lends genuineness to their performances—particularly in the film’s more emotionally raw sequences. Zelda’s portrayal of Mickey is both savage and fractured, embodying a woman wavering between fear and fury. John brings a poignant grief to Jake, a man who doesn’t believe in the supernatural but will believe in his daughter if it means not losing her. And Toby Poser’s Solveig is mesmerizing—a figure who hovers between healer and harbinger, inviting us to question her motives at every turn.
A special mention must be made of Lulu Adams, who appears in a brief but pivotal role as “Ruther at Reception,” an “innkeeper” with a deep awareness of the surrounding world and the tales that it has to tell. Her character fills a vital gap in the story, offering cryptic yet essential insights that ground some of the film’s more metaphysical elements. It may be a cameo, but that information ripples through the rest of the film.
Stylistically, MOTHER OF FLIES carries a heavy gothic influence. Its color palette is earthy and drained, dark reds and greens fill the screen, its locations shadowed by trees and time. There's a rustic rot to everything—like nature reclaiming the space after too much grief has passed through. It leans fully into the folklore and ancestral memory that haunts every frame. The magic here is dirty, feral, and something you can feel.
For all its artistry, MOTHER OF FLIES still lands hard when it comes to emotion. Oddly, I’m not normally a fan of “artsy” horror, but that’s where its power lies. It’s not horror for horror’s sake—it’s horror as catharsis. Born from the family’s own experiences with cancer and loss, this is storytelling with pain behind it, and it shows. The rituals feel guttural, not performed. The screams feel lived in, not manufactured. And the final moments, bleak as they are, carry a strange sense of peace—as if the characters have found clarity in the chaos.
This is easily one of the Adams Family’s most mature films, not in terms of content alone, but in its confidence. They’re telling the story they need to, in a way only they could. It may be their darkest, but it’s also one of their most honest. MOTHER OF FLIES won’t be for everyone. It’s slow, it’s dark, and it lingers in the moments most films would rush through. But for those who appreciate horror that bleeds meaning, it’s a haunting experience. It’s artsy, yes—but it’s artsy with purpose. And in a genre that too often forgets its power to confront real pain, that matters.
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[photo courtesy of YELLOW VEIL PICTURES, SHUDDER, WONDER WHEEL PRODUCTIONS]
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