Mother of the Flies Review – A horror set in the woods where the houseguests are microdosed on the drug | film

IIf you’re a certain type of parent who loves folk horror movies, crafts with kids, and unusual family road trips, then perhaps photos from the work of the very adorable Adams-Poser family, a clan that includes upstate New York parents (Toby Poser and John Adams) and their seven-legged cat children (Zelda and Lulu Adams), will be on your mood board. This filmmaking family multitasks beyond boundaries, not just serves

Co-directors, co-writers, producers and stars, but they also operate the camera and make the costumes. The results were amazing, professional and effective (especially in terms of generating panic). And if the texts are often somewhat pretentious, they are no less interesting and always original.

Their previous shows include Hellbender, Halfway to Zen, and Rumblestrips, tales often centered around families or family units, though John Adams doesn’t always play the father figure and Poser isn’t always the mother. In her most recent work, Poser has opened the indigo vat and spun some wool to create an enchanting sky-blue costume to play the strange woman Solveig, a character with strong maternal feelings, not least towards the many blue bottles that follow her everywhere; However, she is not technically the mother of the novel’s protagonist, college student Mickey (Zelda Adams). The economic dialogue at the end reveals that Mickey survived cancer a few years ago that led to a hysterectomy, but a new, inoperable tumor the size of an apple (very biblical) has recently grown in her stomach and she probably has six months to live.

Willing to try anything that might help, Mickey responds to a mysterious summons to visit Solveig in a remote, dank forest house, accompanied by her widowed father Jake (John Adams). The property looks like an ornate Victorian house decorated with a baobab tree, creating a structure made mostly of moss-covered roots and gnarled limbs. Jake isn’t thrilled about the diet of mushrooms and leaves, or the lack of indoor bathrooms, but he’s up for anything that might help his daughter. Mickey is more open to Solveig’s strange hospitality, distinctly archaic verbiage and tendency to give her guests small doses of the drug. No doubt some viewers would rate this experience highly if it were offered on Airbnb.

The filmmakers build a dense swamp atmosphere over the first 45 minutes as images shift between Mickey and Jake’s bewildered viewpoints and the more bizarre visions and memories associated with Solveig. The latter comes drenched in fake gore, populated by rotting corpses, huge screaming mouths, and dead children being unceremoniously dumped into buckets while several supporting players – many of whom, if you check the credits, bear the surname Adams, funnily enough – stand around looking imposing and menacing.

The effect is unsettling and full of menace, but there are very few sequences lining the action where we hear Solveig repeating what sounds like a bad parody of Emily Dickinson – things like “The truth won’t hide in dreams / It’s still fixed / Visible”, the beats spread out like worn-out mattresses. Overall, this is better and more polished than some of the Adams-Poser group’s previous efforts, but perhaps not enough sophistication to take their vision to the next level.