How the Adams Family Stays Close By Shooting Wild Horror Movies Together in the Woods, Including ‘Mother of Flies,’ Their Most Ambitious Work Yet

There’s DIY filmmaking, and then there’s the horror factory that the Adams Family has created in the Catskill Mountains woods near their New York state hometown.

The collective — father John Adams, mother Toby Poser, and their daughters, Zelda Adams and Lulu Adams — spend their time making indie horror movies together. Their hands are in every part of the production: They write, direct, produce, star in, shoot and edit their work. They have a family band, Hellbender, that scores and writes songs for the films. And they have their own production banner, Wonder Wheel Productions.

Known for their creativity and passion for filmmaking in the horror communities from films like 2021’s “Hellbender” and 2023’s “Where the Devil Roams,” the family is releasing its highest-profile work yet. “Mother of Flies,” the family’s ninth feature together, which releases Friday on Shudder, is a witch tale that put a spell on last year’s Fantasia Film Festival, where it was the first American film to win the coveted Cheval Noir at the Montreal genre event.

At their core, the family just loves making art together, and in turn, they say it brings them closer.

“We’re very lucky, and we know it,” John Adams says. “Our films have been accepted by beautiful friends out there in the horror community, and it’s given us permission to continue doing art together, which we’ve done with the kids since they were born. They’ve been around an artistic lifestyle. They’ve wanted to be involved in it. And we learn as parents from our kids because they’re coming from a different age and have different thoughts. We teach them, they teach us, we laugh. We can take things and talk about them together, visualize it, film it and become empowered by it. There are a lot of other families out there like us, so we’re talking to them, and they’re talking to us. That’s what we’ve really come to realize, that in the horror community, there’s an open-mindedness and an open-heartedness to the people out there that want to talk about things like this — and it’s a lot easier to talk about when it’s dressed in blood and magic.”

Indeed, “Mother of Flies” deals with a topic that might be challenging for a lot of families to talk about. In the film, Mickey (Zelda Adams) is a young woman who gets a dire cancer diagnosis, and she goes with her father, Jake (John Adams), to see a witch (Toby Poser) who claims she can cure the cancer by summoning dark magic. The plot was inspired by the family’s real-life health battles.

“All of our horror films have something to do with what’s going on in our lives,” Zelda Adams says. “At the stage we were at a year and a half ago when we made this film, it felt like we were ready to tackle a theme that is pretty powerful in our lives, which is cancer. Both John and Toby have had it and are survivors of it. A year and a half ago, I found out I have Lynch syndrome, which makes me more susceptible to certain cancers. We thought, ‘You know what? This news sucks. We should make a movie about it.’ And we did, and it’s really personal and beautiful. Also, it was very therapeutic making this movie. It felt amazing to take the reins over something that felt very scary. I also felt closer to my parents because we did have a lot of conversations about what their past with cancer was like, and how we wanted to tell this story through their lens and mine, and in a powerful way.”

Looking back into their family history, Poser says she discovered that John Adams was a compatible creative collaborator at the beginning of their relationship.

“Early on, when we were feeling each other out, we would take these wildly far-flung trips to places like Big Bend National Park, or we would hike down a river for a week,” she says. “When you spend that much time with someone in isolation, you really get to know them and their creative DNA: The music you listen to, the guitar you play around a campfire, the stories you tell when you’re hiking down a river with snakes crawling around you. So I realized early on, the stories John would tell me — even the fanciful ones that were just fun fibs — I realized this is a creative guy. He was a musician, he was an artist. So early on, I was really aware of his creative spark, and it allowed me to feel like I, too, could step up to that plate.”

That love of storytelling has inspired all of the family members to volunteer and do what’s needed to get films made. For example, when the family first started shooting together, John Adams volunteered to edit because no one had that skill. But it ended up being fulfilling for him as an artist.

“I raised my hand and said, ‘Okay, I’ll edit our first film,’” he says. “So I went on YouTube to learn how to edit, on Final Cut at that time. I didn’t know anything, and it was a bit terrifying. Now I absolutely love editing. It’s like my favorite yoga practice, because it’s putting one shingle down and another shingle down and another shingle down. It’s really soothing and fun. So much of the storytelling comes in that process.”

That said, John Adams says that despite their love of new creative challenges, he feels much more comfortable in the DIY space than working on larger-scale or studio projects.

“I love our guerrilla style. I love our punk style,” he says. “I think there’s an audience out there that enjoys what we do, and I think that there’s an audience out there that wants big studio films. But what I love about working with Toby and Zelda and people in our town and anybody who is a punk like us is that we do have a certain voice, and I enjoy that voice. I don’t really want to work in the studio system because I’m not doing this for money. I mean, I want to be able to afford pizza, but I don’t want a fancy car. So there’s not a lot of incentive for me. I love what we do, and it brings me a lot of joy.”

Even with the imminent release of “Mother of Flies,” the family is almost done shooting its tenth feature together, “The Glorious Dead.” The logline? A sheriff (Poser) and her deputy (Zelda Adams) wake up in the morning, and the world is not what it seems. From there, the characters face the darkness that the family is known for. The Adamses couldn’t be more excited.

“The blood looks so good in the snow,” John Adams says, lighting up while describing the wintry shoot. “It’s just magic. We’re having the time of our lives right now.”

Watch the trailer for “Mother of Flies” below.