MOTHER OF FLIES
(director/writer: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser; cinematographer: John Adams, Zelda Adams; editors: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser; music: H6llb6nd6r, Visual Effects/Digital; cast: Zelda Adams (Mickey), Toby Poser (Solveig), John Adams (Jake), Lulu Adams (Ruthie at Reception), Trey Lindsay (Oncologist), Noble Wilson-Eiden (Harry), Jessica Beveridge (Midwife), Sofia Macaluso (Village Birth Mother), Health Macaluso (Village Patriarch), Nikki Macaluso (Village Grandmother); Runtime: 92; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Toby Poser; A Shudder release of a Wonder Wheel Productions; 2025)
“It delivers the shocks, the scares and an eye-popping look at witchery.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This unsettling folklore/horror film is by the upstate New York cultist Adams family, who consist of husband John Adams, his wife Toby Poser and their daughters Lulu and Zelda. Between them they direct, write, produce, photograph, create the music for and star in their own films. They began their movie careers in 2019 with the occult film “The Deeper You Dig.”
The writers and directors for “Mothers of Flies” are John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser (“Where the Devil Roams”/”Hell Hole”).
The teenage college student Mickey (Zelda Adams) has terminal cancer (a tumor in her stomach) that her conventional doctors can’t cure. She talks her widower father Jake (John Adams) into taking her by car into the deep woods of the Catskills, in upstate NY, to be treated by a healer witch who uses black magic, Solveig (Toby Poser). The witch serves them uncooked leafy plants and a hemlock tea. She lives in a strange house in the woods without a bathroom, but with mattresses made out of moss and trees sticking out of the rooms (the real-life home of the Adams family). There are flies circling around the maternal-minded witch.
The witch is odd, her surroundings are odd, and her treatment is odd. She plays head games with Jake when she sees he’s not a believer of her bizarre three-day healing cure and he’s wary she wants no money for her service–concerned about his daughter’s safety, not really sure if the witch can be trusted to cure his daughter for free because of her lack of humanity.
We learn the witch’s dark backstory from contact with the local motel clerk (Lulu Adams), saying that she was the medical lady for a clannish community from a long-time ago who used her supernatural powers for healing the incurable.
The daughter puts all her hopes on believing the witch can cure her when no one else can, while dad worries the witch might bring more harm to his precious child or use her for nefarious purposes.
The photography of the lush woods is striking, the atmosphere is haunting, the witch’s visions of corpses are terrifying, and Zelda’s performance is special even if the dialogue is stilted and the screenplay is amateurish.
The lyrical and original film uses fillers to pad its slight story. However, it’s a slow burn that leads to an aesthetically pleasing surprise ending in the final 20 minutes.
The low-budget and low-tech visionary occult film is impactful and unpredictable, as it delivers the shocks, the scares and an eye-popping look at witchery. It’s the family’s best film so far, as it adds more personal things, beauty and thought to its weird nature, survival and mortality stories.
It played at the Fantasia Festival.
REVIEWED ON 3/1/2026 GRADE: B+
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