Mother of Flies review horror in the woods as house guests are microdosed with psychedelics

"The family members multitask above and beyond, serving not just as co-directors, co-writers, producers and stars, but also operating the camera and making the costumes. The results are genuinely striking, professional and effective (especially in terms of scare-generation). And if the scripts are often a smidge pretentious, they are never less than interesting and always original. Their previous offerings include Hellbender, Halfway to Zen and Rumblestrips, tales that often revolve around families or familial units,"

"In their latest, Poser has cracked open the indigo pot and spun up some wool to make a witchy, cerulean outfit to play weird woman Solveig, a figure with strong maternal feelings, not least towards the many bluebottles that follow her everywhere; she isn't, however, technically a mother to the protagonist, college student Mickey (Zelda Adams). The economical dialogue eventually reveals that Mickey survived cancer some years ago which resulted in a hysterectomy."

"Willing to try anything that might help, Mickey answers a mysterious summons to visit Solveig in a remote, dank forest house, accompanied by her widowed father, Jake (John Adams). The accommodation looks like an ornate Victorian house mated with a baobab tree, producing a structure made of mostly gnarled roots and limbs covered with moss. Jake isn't thrilled with the foraged mushroom and leaf diet, or the lack of en suite bathrooms, but he is game for anything that"

An upstate New York family collaborates to create low-budget thriller-horror films, multitasking as co-directors, writers, producers, actors, camera operators and costume designers. Their films are striking, professional and effective at generating scares, mixing originality with occasionally pretentious scripts. Recent work features recurring family or familial-unit themes while roles shift among members. In the latest film, Solveig, a witchy figure, cares for bluebottles and draws in Mickey, a college student who survived cancer and a hysterectomy. Mickey returns with her widowed father to a remote moss-covered house seeking help for a new inoperable abdominal tumor.

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