Interview: Toby Poser and John Adams on ‘Mother of Flies’ and the Language of Folk Horror
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Toby Poser and John Adams (along with their daughters, Lulu and Zelda) are a filmmaking family who write, act, shoot, produce, direct, edit, and score their own independent horror films, including Hellbender, Hell Hole, The Deeper You Dig, and Where the Devil Roams. Their latest is Mother of Flies (read our review), which played at the 2025 Chicago International Film Festival.
We chatted with Toby and John about the making of Mother of Flies, the “folk horror” language of their films, taking filmmaking cues from nature, and more!
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
1. What’s the Adams Family origin story?
John: Toby was always an actress, and when she turned 40 she really wasn’t getting offered any roles because the industry doesn’t really take older women that seriously. So she wrote a script, stopped asking permission, and we made our first movie with our two kids.
2. Your family is quite prolific, releasing about a film a year. After releasing a movie, what does the process typically look like for starting the next one?
Toby: We call it “slinging spaghetti”, and eventually something sticks that we just love. Then we say, “Well, that’s it. We’ve talked about it enough. We’re making it.” That’s how we started our next one.
John: We’re a family that enjoys hanging out together, so it’s just regular conversation. A movie idea comes up right after the sentence of “What are we having for dinner?” Or on the way to soccer practice back when the girls were in school. It was always that organic. There’s a ton of ideas and the solid one eventually lands like concrete, and then we go.
3. Mother of Flies feels like your most accomplished work to date, from everything to the visual composition, the richness of the cinematography, the acting, and the special effects. Is there a conscious urge to push yourselves further with each film, or does it get easier each time working with the same people?
Toby: Certain things are easier because we know each other’s strengths by now, and you just get rid of the fat. But each time we make a film we learn so much. It’s part of our motivation to jump right into the next, so we’re itching to try whatever is on our minds from the last that we’ve learned. Like for the next one, we really want to do something that has escalating doom and kinetic energy that’s just relentless.
John: Because Mother of Flies is very meditative, and we set out to make it that way. We really wanted nature to be the star, with all the characters inside the star. In the next one Toby is the star, and we’re gonna follow her relentlessly through a terrible day. It’s gonna be fun. It’s a reaction to talking with you and going to the Chicago International Film Festival or the Telluride Horror Show, because we’re speaking to audiences, getting a feel of what we did well, what we didn’t do well, and wanting to keep the conversation interesting. So we’re not going to go make another meditative movie right now.
4. There are so many striking sequences: the opening of Solveig among the bodies and gore, the talking Solveig skeleton amongst the tree roots, the snake. Where in the process do you come up with the “folk horror” language of your films?
Toby: We knew we wanted flashbacks from Solveig’s life to kind of percolate through the modern narrative. It also was a way for us to introduce all that cool, dark, gooey stuff that we wanted. We really wanted to honor the rot and ruin in this movie, so Solveig’s story was a great place to do that. And we live in the mountains. We’re surrounded by dead things. We always hear things dying in the night, and we see them. We often use dead carcasses in our films because they’re just there. Part of what makes us able to do what we do is we take cues from the universe. It’s always giving us these beautiful skeletons in the woods. And thematically it really works. The flies showed up and were such divas, immediately giving us clues about what this film was about.
John: We talked a lot about how this is a movie about a necromancer, and how does the magic of a necromancer work? We really loved the idea that a good necromancer is tricking death, almost like making love to it for a reason. For her and for death, it’s like a mutual respect, but there is a deal being made. We had a lot of fun talking about how we are gonna sexualize necromancy, not in a gross way but in a romantic, beautiful way. So that opening sequence was really fun because it’s figuring out how do you cinematically show that relationship and then later show that she’s dead but growing up through death? That whole root thing was something we talked about a ton. That was Toby’s idea to say we need to have me growing up out of the roots, as if I’ve been buried and I’m coming back.
Photo: Mother of Flies
5. Trey Lindsay has worked with you on special effects since The Deeper You Dig. How did that relationship start, and how does his work help supplement your family’s vision?
John: Trey changed our lives. We were looking for someone to do effects for us with The Deeper You Dig, and he lives an hour away from us and we’ve just formed this artistic and wonderful friendship with him. We’ve all evolved together, with us figuring out how to help him make the effects look as genuine and as real as possible, and him helping us to film for him. So all the effects are talked about early and planned out. We love him so much as an artist, but we really love him as a person. If you saw where he works, it’s so great because he does everything in his basement and he films stuff for us because everything’s done by composites. We’ll send him all of our stuff and then he’ll add the things he needs to composite them to really bring it all to life.
6. When you’re working with a lower budget, do you create the film knowing what you can do within that range or do you start big and narrow down? Was there anything you wanted to include in Mother of Flies that wasn’t possible this time around?
Toby: Interesting question. The answer to the last part is no, I don’t think there’s anything we’re really missing. We achieved everything we wanted because we don’t go in with big ideas we then have to chip away at. Instead we’re just like: What do we have? What are our resources? How can we just build up to the ceiling of our resources? And that’s always good for our morale and our soul. I don’t think we ever feel like we’re lacking. We don’t have lights—we don’t own one single light. So when you know you’re gonna rely on nature doing a lot of that heavy lifting, you just have the patience to wait on the clouds so the light looks flat and right, and you’re just hanging out in the woods doing what you love with the people you love. And there’s nothing better.
7. If someday A24 comes to you and says “Here’s $50 million for a movie”, what would you do with it?
John: Send $49.9 million to a charity and spend $100,000 to make a movie we like.
8. Hellbender was the first film of yours I saw, and it was a lot of fun to see the family back in the realm of witches. Did you reach back to the Hellbender mother character at all when creating Solveig’s mythology? Or were there any other folkloric or historical references you turned to help create her?
Toby: We knew this would share some DNA with Hellbender, but I personally didn’t connect the Hellbender lore with with Solveig’s lore. I think of the Hellbender lore as more supernatural in a way. I think Solveig really lived in the human realm. Connecting to the second part of your question, this was like a nod to all the women historically who have been maligned simply for being menders, healers, for having knowledge that intimidated others—men and women alike. So I consider her incredibly modern but definitely a human who had incredible knowledge that helped her harness nature into her necromantic will. The myth behind Solveig is that she really understands humanity and the duality of life and death, the beauty of decay. She is decay magic, and even in her death under the ground harnesses that to reach out to this girl who’s on the brink of death. So I think death was the real influence here for the magic, and the fact that we live in nature and let it just kind of whisper its secrets in our ears.
“You’re just hanging out in the woods doing what you love with the people you love. And there’s nothing better.”
9. If each of you had one witchy power, what would it be?
John: I’d fly.
Toby: That’s such a beautiful question. I think I would ease pain.
John: Ooh, see, that’s Toby. I’m all greedy flying and she’s helping.
10. I was fascinated by the design of Solveig’s house, which I believe is a decorated version of your home. Particularly the moss bed. Have you ever considered opening a witch bed-and-breakfast?
John: Well, the food would be great for the witch bed-and-breakfast. Everything would have turmeric in it. But this was fun because the challenge for me, Trey, and Toby was that they’re not really in a house. They’re actually in the woods, sleeping in the woods for three days. It’s all a magic trick, and so how do we hint to the audience that they’re just in the woods? So that’s why we built the moss beds and we put the trees growing through the house. The moss bed shows her respect and love for Zelda’s character, but my bed is like an old upstate junkyard, because that’s how she feels about me. So it was really fun to visualize the magic trick she’s playing on these two characters.
11. While your movies are usually labeled as “folk horror,” they clearly have a unique language to them that goes beyond the genre. Were there any non-horror influences or inspirations you drew upon for Mother of Flies?
John: For some reason I’m always mentally referring to a movie called The Wrestler. Only because when I watched it, I was like “I know all these people. This is so real.” So I refer to that in my brain. I’m not trying to copy the cinematography or the tone of it, but I do love that it feels just organically real.
Toby: When we were shooting this we saw Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s The Devil’s Bath, so we couldn’t have been influenced by it because we were already shooting, but I saw similarities and kind of considered it more like a sister saying, “Hey, you’re on the right path.” I love that movie so much. There’s even a scene where she eats a butterfly, and we had just shot the scene where I literally ate a dead butterfly. But instead of being bummed out we saw it as just another sign of artistic and natural connection. That film has such human horror. Our film has a lot of magic but also real honest human horror that humans endure.
12. Besides making movies, you also have a family band. Are we ever going to see a Hellbender live tour?
John: We’d like to do a Hellbender live tour. The big problem is that we’re all spread out. Zelda’s in New York. We’re traveling around. We would love to do a live show, but we want to practice because we don’t want to get up there and not know what we’re doing.
+1. What’s a question you want to ask us?
Toby: What would your superpower be?
James: I think some time manipulation would be fun. Like time travel but be able to experience time in different ways. Slow things down, speed things up. That could be cool.
John: What do you think the zeitgeist for movies will be in 2026?
James: I think we’re seeing a lot of like late-stage capitalism type films, just sort of everything imploding. Particularly this year with Ari Aster’s Eddington, One Battle After Another, and The Long Walk.