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The Adams family confronts death with heavy-metal style in Mother Of Flies

The first family of indie horror reckons with terminal illness and dark magic in their moody latest.

By Katie Rife  |  January 22, 2026 | 10:00am
Photo: Shudder
Film Reviews adams family
The Adams family confronts death with heavy-metal style in Mother Of Flies

“The difference between a poison and a cure is the dose,” forest witch Selveig (Toby Poser) tells the skeptical father of a dying young woman in the horror film Mother Of Flies. This concept can be applied in both science and magic, and Mother Of Flies is informed by both Western medicine and occult practice, syncretizing these opposing forces by filtering them through its creators’ personal experiences with illness. The result is occult horror as potent as the snake venom in one of Selveig’s dreadful “cures.”

Specifically, writer-directors John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser draw parallels between the powerful chemicals used in chemotherapy and the baneful magic of its title character, a necromancer who offers a college student a last-ditch treatment for her terminal cancer. Selveig first contacts Mickey (Zelda Adams) in a dream, a fact that Mickey declines to share with her dad Jake (John Adams) until they’re already at the witch’s Baba Yaga-esque hut. He wouldn’t have agreed to drive her there if he knew; she’s skeptical herself, but given her recent diagnosis, she has nothing left to lose. 

Selveig’s “cure” will take three days, and will be extremely painful. It will require Mickey to wade into the rot and decay that fuels Selveig’s power, confronting her own mortality in the process. Mother Of Flies accompanies the two step-by-step through the ritual, which is informed both by actual occult practices and Selveig’s fictional backstory. Selveig loves death. She’s intimate with it, both emotionally and physically. Poser gives herself completely to this strange, serious character, and her commitment is key to what makes the film work. 

The woods are an invaluable asset as well. As in their films Hellbender and Where The Devil Roams, the filmmakers favor a high-contrast look that renders the forest in saturated shades of green punctuated with eye-singing orange. The colors of death—bruised purple, deoxygenated blue—are similarly vivid, giving shots of maggots writhing in a pool of decomposing flesh an undeniable Gothic beauty. Images of bones and blood and corpses abound, and the overall vibe is like a heavy-metal music video in the best way possible.

This is accompanied by an emotional gravity that comes from the film’s real-world context. Poser and John Adams are a married couple, and Zelda their daughter; together with older daughter Lulu Adams (who plays a small role as a hotel clerk), they’ve been making movies together for over a decade, developing their style as they go. Mother Of Flies is a new high for this tight-knit unit, drawing power from their own story as a family: Both Poser and John Adams are cancer survivors, and they have transformed that painful experience into an awesome work of art. 

An Adams family production is an inherently DIY affair: The writing, directing, editing, producing, cinematography, sound design, camera operation. costume design, set design, and set building for Mother Of Flies were all handled by Poser, Adams, and their children, who also make up the film’s core cast. (Even the doom-rock soundtrack was composed in-house by H6LLB6ND6R, a contender for the world’s coolest family band.) Combined with a minimal budget, this does mean the film has a few technical limitations. But getting hung up on those moments where the sound mix or video compositing are rough around the edges is missing the point. 

In a world where film production is increasingly consolidated into the hands of a few risk-adverse corporate entities, the Adams family embodies the spirit of true independent filmmaking. That wouldn’t matter if they weren’t doing it well, however, and Mother Of Flies outdoes many of its more well-funded peers in terms of both audacity and emotion. This is no paean to witchcraft as pop-feminist empowerment: Solveig’s magic is dark and dangerous, and the film is unblinking in terms of its relationship with death. 

Midway through their ordeal, Mickey asks her father what he will do if Solveig’s ritual doesn’t work. “I’d have to chase you,” he says, meaning that he’d die by suicide shortly after Mickey’s cancer takes her. She nods; they’ve had this discussion before. There are no tears, and Mickey does not beg Jake to reconsider. Instead, he starts riffing about dying in the most dramatic way possible, making his terminally ill daughter laugh. This is the attitude of people who are intimate with death, who know it well enough that they are no longer afraid. The fact that this is an actual father and daughter alchemizing their actual family trauma just adds another layer of resonance. 

Director: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Writer: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Starring: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Lulu Adams, Toby Poser
Release Date: January 23, 2026

 
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