The Adams Family are known for their metal folk horror with sick imagery. They have been making their own movies since 2010. However, it’s their recent horror streak that is the reason most of us are obsessed with their work. With beloved titles like Hellbender, The Deeper You Dig, and Where the Devil Roams they have cemented their place as indie horror royalty. So, the fest circuit was more than happy to welcome them back with their newest film, Mother of Flies. This newest project has introduced a new favorite character into the horror lexicon. The film also sees Toby Poser give one of the best performances of the year.
What Toby Poser does with the character of Solveig is a thing of wicked beauty. She steals scenes as she speaks in truths, but somehow still weaves a mystery of a woman we want more time with. It’s hard to not fall under Solveig’s spell as you learn more about her. After seeing the movie a few times this festival season, she’s still captivating and her arc is very timely in this current political climate. This is why I leapt at the chance to to interview Poser about Mother of Flies, her talented family, and what’s next for The Adams Family.
SB: Your newest movie, Mother of Flies, is winning over audiences in festivals as we speak. I don’t want to give anything away, but your character, Solveig, is pretty iconic. You also give one of my favorite performances of the year. What went into your preparation for this character? Were there books, movies, etc., that you looked towards when writing and then embodying her?
Toby Poser: Well thanks, Sharai! I can’t deny I’m in love with Solveig. She’s a strangely modern woman in many ways. She is upfront; is patient beyond imagination; is quite progressive in her views towards both science and choice – in tandem with a deep appreciation for the mysteries in life and death. So it was such a pleasure conjuring up her backstory and her ritualistic behavior. She’s also a loving nod towards all the women who’ve historically been maligned for being knowledgeable, powerful, or “different.”
I always find inspiration in researching strong female figures (Hecate, Kali Ma, Lilith…) and lore about witchcraft (in this case, in exploring necromancy, reading about hermetic philosophy). It’s so much fun slipping down a long rabbit hole to get the juices flowing, which always confirms how much people have been thinking about and attempting to grasp the mysteries in our world. And that helped me then feel confident about trusting my own intuition in crafting Solveig’s magic, in her process. I like to think of it as tapping into that child in all of us whose imagination was able to build vast worlds with the most mundane things, like mud, sticks, trash that washes up on a beach. Once you let that kind of free, wild thinking in, you start having fun and can strive for your own stabs at originality in your mythologies.
On a fundamental level it just made such sense that a necromancer would use snakes (emblems of renewal with their shedding skin), snake embryos (birth, transformation, emergence, life), and thorns (agents between a plant and a living thing that is affected by their potent poison and prick)…. I could go on! But the most important discovery in finding Solveig was the connection between a necromancer – someone whose currency is death – and a girl with a tumor, which is essentially a death device in the body. This really helped give birth to the logic behind Solveig’s work with the young dying Mickey; how to manipulate this death device through death work, the way a midwife works with a mother and baby. Solveig’s death work also felt like a kind of sex work. Her necromancy is both a transaction (an exchange) and a distraction.
Solveig understands that Death is cold and craves a little light and warmth, and Solveig’s willing to give it. And so once we understood the foundation of Solveig’s work, it was natural to build this liminal playground where magic and truth collide; where life and death are swings on the same structure.
SB: I think many people fail to realize how long you’ve been in the business. You have acting credits going back to the 90s, which include Sex and the City and Guiding Light, proving that you can do it all. However, the horror kids are happy that you have planted your flag in the horror community. What draws you to this genre?
Toby Poser: I’ve had a long, fun career in theater, TV and film, and voice work, which started to dwindle at 40. Out of that creative desert we began making films as a family in 2010. The first film was actually meant to be a very dark, brutal ghost western, but we couldn’t quite go there yet. The girls were 6 and 11, and we just weren’t ready to kill them! So after making several dramas (pretty dark ones), we found ourselves ready to go deeper. And it was literally like finding love, like finding your best match. It just felt right for all of us.
I think we still make so-called dramas, but they are more textured, human stories shrouded in blood and viscera and horrific mayhem. In a way, the more we lean into the dark, the more loving our films can be, because one feeds the other. The desperation goes deeper. I think it’s healthy for us as a family to explore themes that are real or important to us, but to explore them through this dark genre glass. It’s certainly more fun.
SB: What has it been like to become the first family of indie horror?
Toby Poser: Ha! Thank you, again. We feel really lucky to be a family that makes films. It’s the coolest thing to blend life and creativity. It’s also convenient! But the best part is sharing in the hard work and the beautiful celebration of it when it all comes together. We live to go to film festivals and meet inspiring, cool, smart people like you, Sharai. It really feels like a broader family, the horror community, and they’ve been incredibly generous and welcoming to us. Plus, we learn so much watching other phenomenal films, it’s always fuel for us to jump into our next. I think we’ve made 10 features by now, but we are in a perpetual state of learning and experimenting. It’s important for us to keep stretching our muscles as storytellers and how we present these stories onscreen.
SB: While we’re talking about your talented family, we should remind people you have a band called H6LLB6ND6R. What made you all decide it was time to start a band in 2019?
Toby Poser: John has been making music and been in many bands since he was a teen. Both of our girls, Lulu and Zelda, had bands with him since they were really young, too. I eventually started floating my voice below (or on top of?) theirs, and all of our voices together seemed to share some sonic DNA. With the band H6LLB6ND6R there was an ominous vibe in John’s writing, and definitely in Z’s singing (with me and Lulu winding in and out of the vocals). When we began exploring imagery for music videos, it was like the universe was screaming to make the movie Hellbender… So we did, and we really hit our stride as a band and as a soundtrack resource for our films.
SB: Hopefully, people notice that your band provides the soundtrack to your movies. There are some really cool and haunting songs in Mother of Flies. Can you walk us through the process of crafting music to go with your films? Or is the process different for each movie?
Toby Poser: John is always writing music, and sometimes the music sparks a storyline, or vice versa. For Mother of Flies there are only 5 actual H6LLB6ND6R songs in the movie, but they are all very relevant in theme and tone. We chose to be selective with the songs in this film for two reasons: so that the few chosen songs really hit home and help tell the story, and so that John could focus on natural sounds and heavy silence. Much of this movie takes place outside in the wilderness, so Nature is doing a lot of the sonic work on her own. We wanted to honor that.
SB: Your family works as a collective and shares the credit for writing, directing, etc. How do you get that many creatives on the same page? Do some of you tend to find yourselves gravitating to certain parts of the process/roles more than other parts?
Toby Poser: We definitely each gravitate towards certain roles. While we all can wear several hats (like getting behind the camera if the others are in front of it), John and Zelda love the camerawork. I love writing. When we are lucky to have Lulu around (she lives in Scotland), she’s an excellent stunt camerawoman. She’s always game to shoot in a blizzard from a moving car. John is such a good editor, and he’s very open to the rest of our opinions and suggestions. Lastly, if we all have different takes on direction of a scene, we do it 3 different ways. The take that best serves the story always wins.
SB: Mother of Flies feels personal. You and John were kind enough to share your histories with cancer at the Fantastic Fest screenings. Many writers find it hard to share personal parts of themselves and their fears in their writing. What’s one bit of advice you would give to people figuring out how to make art about (or inspired by) the scarier moments of their lives?
Toby Poser: The thing about cracking your chest open and splattering the screen with your emotional innards is that it’s healthy, cathartic, safe, and potentially healing. For me, it’s been very powerful taking dark or painful conversations we have actually had about fear, suicide, guilt… and revisiting them through art, through storytelling on our own terms. Zelda inherited the genetic cancer proclivities I have (I had a reproductive cancer and have a genetic syndrome called Lynch). So, for her too this felt empowering to face that truth, as opposed to run from it. John’s experience with cancer (he had lymphoma in the mid 90s) was really brutal and long. Making this film has been very personal and sometimes painful for him.
But there’s something to be said about the collective experience of talking about these painful stories – not only for the person who is fighting or has fought for life, but equally so for the person who loves the person fighting for life. Their stories are also difficult and valuable. The best part of showing Mother of Flies at festivals has been the conversations we have afterwards with people who want to talk from both these angles. Anyway, there’s always an autobiographical current underneath our films, and it was positive for us as a family to finally fuse our medical histories with our filmmaking. So my advice would be to let those fears be your lodestar. Follow the pain, if you’re able to, and let it light little fires in your imagination. Honesty goes a long way and always pokes through in the best ways.
SB: The Adams Family films are always so carefully crafted and resonate with many of us for so many reasons. Whether it’s the imagery, poetic language, or the rock and roll folk horror vibe, these films are usually a feast. However, Mother of Flies feels like everything is turned up to a 10. Did this one feel different when you were making it? Or was there something different about this process than other movies?
Toby Poser: Since this film is so personal, it felt very raw and oddly natural making it. The wildest thing was seeing Zelda channel these personal experiences her parents have had through her own character. That was surreal and, again, strangely powerful. Even though we were conjuring magic and dark rituals through Solveig, everything somehow made sense. We always aim to have fun while shooting, but this shoot felt especially organic and intuitive. There wasn’t a lot of doubt – we just went for it.
SB: What’s one thing you’ve been dying to talk about regarding this movie (non-spoilers obviously) and haven’t been able to?
Toby Poser: Thanks for asking! Few people have asked about the live snake we worked with. It was a wild thing to do, as someone who’s not exactly comfortable around snakes. John has a cousin, Shane, who has pet snakes. He told us one of them, Cooper, is pretty friendly. So, we hired the ball python Cooper, and Shane helped us work with him. Cooper was really easygoing, poking his head out of the green screen cloth and generally “performing” great.
And when it was time for me to get on the ground with my mouth wide open, my eyes wide open, with the hope that Cooper would slither my way…Well, this took a lot of blind faith and courage for me. As if attracted to the warmth of my mouth he slithered towards it…And Shane said, “Don’t move your tongue. He might think it’s a mouse…” Holy hell. I managed to do two takes without getting my tongue fanged, moving my head when Cooper got about a foot away. I don’t ever wanna do that again – but it was worth it.
SB: What are you working on next after you finish your festival run with Mother of Flies?
Toby Poser: We are shooting a new feature this winter. It’s about one very bad day in the life of a small town sheriff who gets out of bed…and all hell breaks loose. This film will be very different in pace and tone for us, and we’re excited to get rocking!
SB: Where can people find you online to keep up with all your work?
Toby Poser: @adams.family.films on IG For information on all of our films you can check out www.WonderWheelProductions.com.