Adams-Poser family’s Mother of Flies blends folk-horror and psychedelics in the woods

Mother of Flies is the latest film from the Adams-Poser family — upstate New York filmmakers Toby Poser and John Adams with their children Zelda and Lulu — and follows college student Mickey, who has a new inoperable tumour and may have “maybe six months to live,” as she travels with her widowed father to a remote forest house run by a witchy figure called Solveig.

The family multitasks on screen and off: they co-direct, co-write, produce and star, while also operating camera and making costumes. In the film Poser plays Solveig, who hosts Mickey and her father in a moss-covered, root-strewn house described as an ornate Victorian mated with a baobab, microdoses her guests with psychedelics, and cultivates a foraged diet that unnerves Jake (John Adams) even as he is willing to try anything to help his daughter.

The review notes the filmmakers build a thick atmosphere over the first 45 minutes by switching between Mickey and Jake’s more ordinary points of view and Solveig’s outlandish visions, which include fake blood, rotting corpses and stillborn babies. The critic calls the results “genuinely striking, professional and effective” for scares, and says the scripts are often pretentious but “never less than interesting and always original,” while also comparing the film to the family’s earlier works such as Hellbender, Halfway to Zen and Rumblestrips.

Key Topics

Culture, Adams-poser Family, Toby Poser, John Adams, Folk Horror, Hellbender