Streaming on Shudder this Friday, January 23, “Mother of Flies” is a lo-fi ethereal nightmare unafraid to ask some of necromancy’s most brutal, existential questions. But the new indie horror film’s trio of co-writer/directors — Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, and John Adams — say audiences and even some interviewers hesitate to do the same when they learn just how personal their family’s latest nightmare really is. Inspired by actual experiences with cancer, “Mother of Flies” produces an arresting intimacy that could give even seasoned genre fans pause.
“A lot of the dialogue comes from our reality,” said Zelda. “We’re a very open family.”
“Horror lets you talk about anything,” agreed John, summarizing the Adams’ approach to connection, both on and offscreen. “You can talk about unorthodox subjects, disguise it in blood, and it’s great. The horror community is very open-minded and very open-hearted with art.”
That belief runs straight through “Mother of Flies,” the dreamy, dreadful folk allegory that IndieWire has championed since it premiered at Fantasia Fest 2025. Last summer, the Adams became the first Americans to win the festival’s top prize — the Cheval Noir for Best Film — but they weren’t a new discovery. Already beloved within the Canadian genre community, they’re a Catskills-based family whose horror operation in upstate New York has become an institution.
Explaining how she, sister Lulu, and parents Toby and John went from garage band to filmmaking unit, Zelda said, “I was lucky enough to be born into this family. My sister and I were raised by two wonderful creatives.” Filmmaking entered the girls’ lives early and stayed. “When I was around six, we made our first film and decided that we loved it from there,” Zelda continued. “After four drama films, we made a horror movie and fell in love with it.”
Toby Poser as Solveig in ‘Mother of Flies’ (2026)©AMC/courtesy Everett Collection
Music was never far behind, and remains essential in their latest, most high-profile film. Zelda started on drums in their family band, formerly known as Kid California. That group evolved into H6LLB6ND6R, whose punk sound serves as both score and texture in the Adams’ films.
“Our band and our movies are just brother and sister,” Zelda joked. “They’re just hanging out.”
That dual identity — musicians and directors, family and collaborators — defines the Adams’ creative DNA. Their first stretch of features saw them leaning into straight dramatic acting, but then the realm of horror storytelling beckoned.
“When you’re making dramas, you’re a little locked down to real life, reality,” John said. “In horror, you can talk about any subject… to an audience ready to meet those topics head on.”
That willingness mattered when the family turned toward mortality in “Mother of Flies.”
“John and I have both had very different cancers,” Toby explained. “John’s was in 1994. Mine was six years ago. And then Zelda, right before we started shooting ‘Mother of Flies,’ learned that she carries the same genetic predisposition, Lynch syndrome, that I have.”
Toby continued, “We’ve been talking about cancer, and we talk about life and death all the time. Sometimes with great humor and power. And we decided, now’s the time that we should be talking about it through the beautiful lens of horror cinema.”
John Adams as Jake in ‘Mother of Flies’©AMC/courtesy Everett Collection
Making the film in the Catskills allowed the Adams family to shape that conversation on their own terms. For Zelda, shooting the movie while she was back in her real childhood home after college was grounding. “It was very comforting,” she said. “All of our films are very therapeutic for us because we’re constantly dealing with themes of family, love, loss, grief. We know the Catskills like the back of our hands. That’s what makes our films all the more special to us. It really is just a sort of diary for our whole family.”
The production stretched across several months, followed by extensive editing — long by microbudget standards, but inseparable from the Adams’ daily life. That diary-like quality feeds directly into Zelda’s performance as Mickey, a young woman facing a terminal diagnosis who seeks out a witch’s dark magic. Asked how she sustained that emotional intensity, Zelda framed it as translation rather than invention.
“I got to have a lot of wonderful conversations with my parents,” she said. “I got to translate their experiences into that character, which was empowering as their daughter and as an actor. We talk about really dark things,” she added. “But we’re always bringing in humor and light. We didn’t want to make a sad movie. We wanted to make a more empowering movie.”
John, who plays Mickey’s father in the film, described watching Zelda and Toby inhabit such fraught roles without sentimentality. “We wanted to celebrate tough times,” he said. “We don’t want to say, ‘Let’s get out a violin and play through the tough times.’ Tough times are beautiful.” For John, the heroism of “Mother of Flies” lies in its ordinariness. “We’re not superheroes,” he said. “We’re just regular old people that have to deal with massive events, and that’s heroic.”
Zelda Adams as Mickey in ‘Mother of Flies’©AMC/courtesy Everett Collection
Toby’s central role as the witch Solveig — a necromancer who treats death as something to be welcomed rather than feared — embodies the script’s most provocative ideas. “I have an innate deep love of nature and honoring and even loving the darkness in life,” Toby said. “As a necromancer, Solveig has an intimate relationship with death and an understanding that death craves warmth and light. It’s a transaction. I give you warmth, and I want something back.”
Nature itself isn’t a backdrop in “Mother of Flies,” it’s an active collaborator. Because they travel light, the Adams could respond immediately when nature offered something unexpected for their film. “There was a dying fawn that we came across,” Toby recalled. “The flies were just starting to be drawn to it, and we immediately shot.”
For IndieWire, Zelda broke down their lean setup: a Canon C-70, a tripod, and two Sennheiser microphones. “We have the ability to improvise,” she said. “If nature brings us a wonderful gift, we can shoot it immediately.”
That flexibility is inseparable from the Adams’ low-budget ethos, one they treat as leverage rather than limitation. “I’ve never felt limited by our small pool of resources,” Toby said. “I think the opposite is true.” Big budgets, she argued, can flatten imagination. “Independent filmmaking is like kids who can have a fantasy life with just mud and sticks and trash.”
When asked what audiences still avoid talking about, the Adams didn’t hedge. “There’s a scene involving a difficult childbirth,” Toby said. “There are Christian characters who are very happy to turn their back on their faith when it comes to saving a life, and they turn to the necromancer instead.” Viewers, she said, haven’t wanted to ask about that.
Lulu Adams in ‘Mother of Flies’©AMC/courtesy Everett Collection
“These silences aren’t accidental,” John said. “That’s why we made the movie. We love it when somebody cuts right in and hits the hard stuff.” For Zelda, that fearlessness is inherited.
“That suicide conversation?” she said. “That’s from a car ride to soccer practice. We’ve always been very transparent about death, drugs, sex, love — anything.”
“Mother of Flies” ultimately reads less like a singular film than a statement of method. Toby spoke about keeping a rejection letter from the National Endowment for the Arts on her desk as a reminder to continue working on their own terms.
“We’re standing together in rooms and talking about shared hearts,” John agreed. “There’s nothing more important now.”
At a moment when American independent cinema is being squeezed — priced out of cities, softened by branding, and increasingly asked to explain itself into corporate safety — the Adams family offers a different model. They make horror at home, contemplating illness, faith, death, and love without sanding down the edges.
“Independent cinema,” Zelda said, “is the most sustainable thing right now, and the most meaningful.”
“Mother of Flies” streams on Shudder Friday, January 23.