Starring Zelda Adams, John Adams, Toby Poser, Lulu Adams and Sofia Macaluso. Written, directed and edited by John Adams, Zelda Adams and Toby Poser. Produced by Toby Poser.
Wonder Wheel Productions

Jake agrees to take his adult daughter Mickey, who is suffering from cancer, to meet a healer called Solveig. They will stay in Solveig’s ivy-covered, isolated house (which is located near a cairn of rocks) for the next few days as the mysterious woman attempts to deal with the tumour in Mickey’s belly. Jake is skeptical, but Mickey is willing to give Solveig a chance, so she listens to the healer’s many musings, though a series of flashbacks make it clear to viewers that Solveig is actually a witch…  

MOTHER OF FLIES is the latest work from that low budget independent filmmaking team – the Adams family. Father John, mother Toby (Poser) and daughters Zelda and Lulu Adams have been responsible for releases including HELLBENDER (2021), WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (2023) and HELL HOLE (2024). With their latest project they succeed in making it look very good, with contrasty and saturated colours ensuring the visuals are stunning. The acting is acceptable but not exceptional, as is the general dialogue, but the many voiceover monologues spouted by Toby Poser as Solveig, which are meant to sound poetic, significant and deep, are actually irritating and dull.  

“Trees bind the heaven to earth, roots clenching down the dirt, leaves grasping high in the sky…” Yada yada yada. Solveig’s unending blathering doesn’t add anything to the really quite astounding visuals, and I’d even say that they severely detract from the impact of all the scenes they’re added to. It would almost pay to watch the film with the sound turned off!

Okay, there is a bunch of interesting things to look out for, like Solveig’s use of a snake’s egg to initiate the removal of Mickey’s tumour, a process that requires the witch to allow a snake to slither into her mouth, which she then regurgitates into Mickey’s mouth later. Flashbacks to the time Solveig dealt with the stillborn child of a woman, bringing it back to life and incurring the wrath of the villagers, is pretty intriguing and utilises a very realistic-looking prosthetic dead baby. There’s a grisly tumour removal scene too; this involves Solveig transforming the tumour-lump into the form of a foetus (providing me with the excuse to feature this movie on the Monster Zone blog as this tumour-child is kind of a monstrous thing, right? Plus – Solveig is eventually revealed as a horror-hag – and films with scary witches can definitely be included on this blog – go and search for my review of the hag-tastic flick THE PALE DOOR )

Towards the end of the film some tension is created when Jake finally finds out that he and Mickey have been staying in an abandoned patch of land next to the cairn of rocks (known locally as The Witch’s Tit), which is the resting place of Solveig’s corpse. Jake, upon hearing this, speeds back to save Mickey, but the film itself cannot be saved, unfortunately, because the striving-to-be-elegiac-and-meaningful monologues scupper everything. Even a flashback showing Solveig getting stoned to death by villagers with faces coated in lime is sucked of all drama because the footage is overlaid with the same endless, flowery, empty verbiage uttered by Toby Poser.
What a pity. Still, the film does look good.