Indie Filmmaking scream team The Adams Family return to the Fantasia Film Festival with another dose of their unique homemade Folk Horror in Mother of Flies. True to form, Mother of Flies is a punk rock, dark-night-of-the-soul portrait of death and old magic featuring some killer tracks from the family’s band H6llb6nd6r and a cast almost exclusively comprised of the Adams themselves. Some families bicker with each other over glasses of wine and pose for forced-smile photographs at the bottom of grandma’s stairs- The Adams writhe in hand dug graves and throw up blood on camera for the whole world to see which, obviously, is the cooler choice. And we thank them for it.
In Mother of Flies Zelda Adams and John Adams star as the father-daughter duo Mickey & Jake who set out on a road trip to meet a spiritual healer. Mickey‘s cancer has returned after a period of remission and since receiving a less than optimistic prognosis from her oncologist, she’s ready to try anything that might keep her alive. With the death of her mother still lingering in the air, the two set out to meet the mysterious Solveig (played by Toby Poser), a self-proclaimed witch who has offered to treat Mickey for free…providing she and her father are strong enough to see the ritual through to the bitter end.
“…wild and weird, beamed in from another realm where nightmare logic is the true north star.”
You wouldn’t always know it just by looking at them, but the Adams’ movies are quite often deeply personal reflections on what their family has been living through. In our previous interviews, they have talked very openly about how the discovery of Toby Poser’s biological father eventually led to the inspiration for their 2021 hit H6llb6nd6r, and how the family’s own journey through cancer treatment has affected so much of what they do. Themes of a loss and sadness, especially concerning family units, have often been a cornerstone of their stories but Mother of Flies really puts those ideas under a microscope. Thankfully these movies never feel like you’re peeking in on someone’s raw therapy sessions. The Adams always find a way to make these introspective exercises wild and weird, beamed in from another realm where nightmare logic is the true north star.
The Adams are truly some of the best independent filmmakers working today, always delivering original stories than resonate with a receptive crowd like a spell cast on the audience. The relationship their films have with death is Folk Horror in its purest form, walking hand-in-hand with those dark thoughts rather than pretending to ignore them.
“A heavy dose of the occult and another singular supernatural chiller”
This particular nightmare comes with a little extra poetry and voiceover which wore on me toward the end, but it comes alongside the team’s patented brand of weird woodsy doom. Mother of Flies is one more notch in Independent Cinema’s heavyweight championship belt which the family has held for years now. It’s a heavy dose of the occult and another singular supernatural chiller from a self-sufficient crew that operates like a 4-person movie studio.
The Adams Family’s Mother of Flies celebrated its World Premiere at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival, where the film won the festival most prestigious award for Best Film in the Cheval Noir competition as well as best score. The film was recently purchased by Shudder and will be available to stream soon, so keep your eyes peeled in The Nightmare on Film Street Discord for release date news, and let us know if you’ve ever been desperate enough to seek medical advice from a witch of the woods.
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