There is something inherently seductive about family-made cinema. Not merely collaborative, not simply economical, but almost ritualistic in nature — as if filmmaking itself becomes a shared incantation passed between bloodlines. Few modern genre outfits embody this notion more fiercely than the Adams family. With Hellbender, they didn’t just announce themselves; they howled their arrival, carving a space within contemporary folk horror that felt raw, feral, and authentically unpolished.

Mother of Flies, however, arrives burdened by that legacy — and perhaps undone by it.

Horror in the Blood

John Adams, Toby Poser, and Zelda Adams have, across their work, demonstrated a fascination with witchcraft, bodily sacrifice, inherited trauma, and the occult as something lived-in rather than merely aesthetic. Their films feel less written than unearthed, less scripted than summoned. In Hellbender, this approach reached its most potent expression: a coming-of-age tale steeped in pagan fury, where mother-daughter dynamics merged seamlessly with mythic inheritance. It felt dangerous. It felt discovered.

That sense of discovery is precisely what Mother of Flies struggles to replicate.

Once again, the Adams family retreat into the woods, this time following a young woman seeking salvation from a terminal diagnosis through dark magic and the guidance of a reclusive witch. It is fertile soil for their obsessions — body, ritual, desperation, the cost of power — yet the film rarely sinks its claws into them with conviction.

A Spell Half-Cast

Where Hellbender burned fast and bright, Mother of Flies smoulders — often beautifully, but frustratingly without ignition.

Atmospherically, the film remains tactile and sincere. There is a genuine commitment to texture here: the forest breathes, the rituals feel weighty, the blood not merely decorative but symbolic. The Adams family’s sincerity is never in question — they are filmmakers who believe deeply in what they are conjuring, and that faith lends the film moments of eerie gravitas.

Yet structurally, the film meanders far too long through its incantations, circling its themes without ever quite piercing them. Scenes linger where they should tighten. Symbolism repeats where it should escalate. What begins as hypnotic gradually becomes inert.

It is only in the final act — when consequences are finally allowed to surface — that Mother of Flies truly stirs. Here, the Adams family remind us of their potency: horror not as spectacle, but as reckoning. Unfortunately, by then, the film has already tested the audience’s patience too severely.

The Problem of Inherited Myth

This raises a more curious question about family-made horror itself.

There is something uniquely powerful about horror crafted by those bound not only by contracts, but by blood. Shared history allows shorthand storytelling. It encourages risk. It produces mythology that feels intimate rather than manufactured. We see echoes of this in other sibling or bloodline creatives — the Phillippou Brothers’ ferocious Talk To Me, even the generational echoes of Cronenbergian body horror.

But such intimacy comes with its own danger: when mythology becomes inherited rather than earned, ritual risks becoming repetition. Aesthetic replaces terror. Gesture replaces consequence.

Mother of Flies occasionally feels like the Adams family performing their own mythology, rather than discovering something new within it.

The Fragility of Folk Horror

Folk horror thrives on the illusion of something uncovered — an ancient story clawed from the soil rather than assembled in post-production. Once codified, once too self-aware, it becomes perilously close to costumed reverence. Hellbender felt dangerous because it seemed accidental, like lightning captured in a bottle. Mother of Flies feels careful by comparison — reverent, controlled, and therefore less frightening.

This does not make it a failure, but it does make it a frustrating experience — one brimming with potential, sincerity, and visual mood, yet restrained by its own solemnity.

Still Watching the Woods

Mother of Flies ultimately lands as a disappointment — not because it lacks craft or ambition, but because it fails to evolve the dark language the Adams family once spoke so fluently. And yet, to dismiss it outright would be to misunderstand its place in the larger arc of their work.

The Adams family remain one of indie horror’s most compelling bloodlines. Even in misstep, they conjure worlds few others dare to inhabit so sincerely. In a genre obsessed with inheritance, curses, and legacy, that alone keeps them worth following — back into the woods, back toward the firelight, back toward whatever spell they choose to cast next.

• Saul Muerte

Mother of Flies is available to stream on Shudder from Fri 23rd Jan.