MOTHER OF FLIES – Review by Nadine Whitney
“Nothing is for free, ever.” – Jake
The Adams Family, composed of Toby Poser, John Adams, and their daughters Zelda and Lulu, have long been leaders of indie DIY horror. Up until Mother of Flies their most effective film was the witch coming-of-age folk horror Hellbender. Mother of Flies is the culmination of years of experimentation and refining their cinema-poetic voices and is simply extraordinary.
Mickey (Zelda Adams) is a young college student who was first diagnosed with cancer when she was fifteen. Recent scans have shown that the cancer is back and is now terminal. With her father, Jake (John Adams) she undertakes what appears to be a last-ditch effort for a cure from Solveig (Toby Poser) a forest-dwelling healer. Jake is sceptical about the unknown woman who has offered to heal Mickey for free, as he knows after the cost of traditional treatment has left them broke. However, as Mickey’s only parent, his wife and her mother having died years ago, he is committed to not “fucking stopping” until his daughter is well.
Known to the audience, but unknown to Mickey and Jake, Solveig is something darker and more ancient than a new-age style healer. Solveig is one who has the power to “woo death… to love it. To lie with it.” She is a necromancer, and she might not be asking for money from Mickey, but she is asking for a bodily payment. All debts must be paid – flesh for flesh, a life for a life.
Thus, Mickey and Jake arrive at a stone monument behind which is an impossible house seemingly made of the forest itself. For three days and nights Mickey must undergo strange rituals with Solveig and learn to believe and have faith in what appears impossible.
Written, directed, filmed, edited, and soundtracked by Toby, John, and Zelda Mother of Flies is grotesquely sublime. Trey Lindsay is the VFX artist (he does a top-rate job) but the Adams family prefer to keep the look of their work as practical and handmade as is possible. Thorns become surgical tools, a moss-covered bed is where Mickey sleeps, Solveig’s altar is also the dinner table in the tree-house where she lays out plates of forest foraged food that she never eats. Nature both nurtures and is a cruel place where survival is fleeting like life itself. The lushness of the visuals are given an extra weight with Solveig’s musings on life and death delivered in verse. While Mickey and Jake wrestle with their philosophies splitting. As much pain as Mickey is in, she wants to believe that she can live. Jake instinctively distrusts Solveig and her “wood witch” ways considering that she is either going to harm Mickey more with her cure, or somehow worse, feed her false hope that will turn out to be bullshit and take the last of the fight out of his daughter.
All three characters meet in some manner of deep pain. Solveig’s is the pain of enduring immense cruelty, shunning, and hypocrisy. She has been lonely with only death as her lover and enemy. Mickey’s pain is physical and metaphysical. Jake speaks about following Mickey into death if a cure is not found. He is afraid and his fear begins to alienate Mickey who eventually asks him to leave them so she can go on with Solveig. “I have to believe,” she says.
Mother of Flies is an intelligent horror film rich in the tradition of dark fairytales. It is also replete with physical and mental agony. Blood flows, pain singes, and the poison of nature is compared with the poisons of medicine. After all, did not Jake allow his daughter to be injected with chemotherapy drugs and undergo radiation? Did those cures not have an immense physical cost that left Mickey scarred? And did they not fail?
Solveig’s motives remain opaque to Mickey until the truth slowly comes to light (or darkness), but Mother of Flies doesn’t judge her especially as the audience knows the judgement she suffered in the past. All three leads do tremendous work as they have acted with each other for years, and of course, are family. However, Toby Poser’s role as Solveig is her most exceptional work capturing a woman who is cold, hot, dangerous, and also longing for something of her own to ease the darkness she has endured.
Mother of Flies is an outstanding folk horror work of art where the script is darkly lyrical and the visual elements at times simply jaw-dropping. A must see for anyone who needs to have faith in the unknown and the outsider.
