By Dee Holloway Mother of Flies
Starring: Zelda Adams, John Adams, and Toby Poser
Directed By: John Adams
As part of the Appalachian chain, the Catskill Mountains of southern New York are among the oldest mountains in the world. It’s only sensible, then, that their crags and green velvet are home to specific strands of regional gothic, the most famous of which is Washington Irving‘s Knickerbocker stories. Through the mid-1960s, the Catskills were so popular with Jewish vacationers from New York City that their lower ranks became known as the Borscht Belt. The path from Albany to the city is especially evocative when seen by train, the foothills and mountains forming a natural transition zone by which travelers emerge from NYC’s mammoth urban hub into an entirely different landscape.
Then there’s the strange case of the Ashokan Reservoir, studded with towns evicted and drowned to create water sources for the city–a fraught relationship, to understate things. Pre-dating this practice is the bulk of Orange County itself, once an inland ocean whose remnants create a singular “black dirt region” distinct from the rest of the state. Historically, even pre-Contact, the Catskills weren’t regularly populated by Native groups due to the difficulty of growing crops in the chain. After colonization, the displacement and death of Native people created an obvious absence, the land’s original inhabitants evidenced in place names and by contemporary groups fighting for conservation and recognition.
The Catskills are unique from New York’s noted Adirondacks; they aren’t even related. There’s something about their hollows, thickly-forested slopes, and slender waterfalls that seduces the eye, rather than dominating it. They’re witch country.
It’s in this already-haunted locale that Mother of Flies takes place, and takes full advantage of its environs. The latest Shudder Original from Wonder Wheel Productions, Mother of Flies doesn’t name its setting, but the signs are there for locals to read. An old ghost story comes to life for troubled-but-tight father-daughter duo Mickey (Zelda Adams) and Jake (John Adams) as they seek alternative treatment for Mickey’s cancer from an apparent witch. Jake is skeptical that whatever healing this woman might bring to bear will have an effect, while Mickey–having experienced chemotherapy–is more open to possibility. There’s an impressive tension at work in Mother of Flies, the push-and-pull between street-wise, science-backed evidence and the murkier currents of belief. And although its chief depiction and concern are what might simply be termed witchcraft, Mickey’s journey truly begins when she embraces chaos magic’s core tenet: choosing to believe.
From Solveig’s (Toby Poser) tree-twined camp to her curious cooking and mode of speech, an occult mist coats every film frame. Solveig by herself is often shot to frighten: she assumes all the esoteric power and majesty of a solitary witch, stuff of children’s nightmares and rural fables. She swallows snakes, makes love to corpses, adores bugs, and flies through the woods. By her own admission, her sole stuff of life is air, recalling a fairy tale term for sorceresses, queen of air and darkness.
There’s a bleak fairy tale element to Mother of Flies, captured in its sweeping forest views, doom-pop soundtrack by Adams Family band H6LLB6ND6R and unsettling visual vignettes. A butterfly, as vivid in death as in life, is poised on a fresh flower, as perfect a #darkwhimsy accessory as any offered by TikTok influencers. A fawn moves from rotting corpse to liquid-eyed, snuffling life; the seasons turn from summer emerald to autumn blaze. Within this cloistered milieu, Zelda Adams playing Mickey functions as lost princess. Fresh-faced, world-weary, and yet willing to take drastic action, Mickey launches the film’s narrative and brings the audience on every step of her painful journey. Yet by midpoint, it becomes clear that Mother of Flies is equally Solveig’s story.
New York, like other Northeastern colonies prior to the formation of the United States, had its share of witch hunts. Upstate New York’s history is also steeped in new religious movements, including Spiritualism, with its emphasis on channeling and speaking to the dead, and Shakerism, which positioned women as men’s equals and featured one-to-one communication with the Divine.
This bedrock is part of Solveig’s tale, shown in desaturated flashbacks throughout the film. Shades of “The Lottery” and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” two of America’s folk-horror touchstones, appear as Solveig experiences the hypocrisy inherent in every society. Her considerable midwife expertise is sought by Christians willing to set aside their own beliefs for power over death; then, inevitably, a punishment when her skills prove too effective. These sequences are the most genuinely horrifying of a film that, while billed as horror, is more meditative, honest, and frankly beautiful than campy witch-flavored gorefest. Indeed, many practicing witches might find more affirmation in Mother of Flies than in those properties interested in Witchcraft™ as feminine empowerment. Solveig is death’s intimate, her sequences couched in poetic monologue but never outright explained. Her spoken dialogue is often simple, even childlike–a contrast that heightens the awe imparted by her grotesque actions.
Mickey’s absent mother and Solveig as outcast mother twine into an unexpected depiction of motherhood, complete with a gross, perfect final twist. If “as above, so below” is the witch’s watchword, then the objective reality of Mother of Flies’ frame story isn’t what’s stake. What Mickey and Jake experience is real, with undeniable material-world reverberations; what Solveig experiences is beyond firm categorization, and the movie isn’t interested in doing so. By its willingness to exist in that space of uncertainty and liminality, Mother of Flies offers something less fixed than scripture and more expansive than fable: a small-town ghost story, made universal by its themes and by the real-life relationships bleeding through the screen.
Wonder Wheel Productions is a true DIY operation, making films with family members and friends top-to-bottom. Mother of Flies is the first of their movies I’ve experienced, but it certainly won’t be the last. Find Mother of Flies on Shudder alongside Hellbender (2021) and check out some charming production stills on Wonder Wheel’s website. Happy viewing, ghouls!
Mother of Flies
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