By George & Josh Bate
The Adams family (no, not the Addams Family) are among the most prolific genre filmmakers in modern cinema. The self-sufficient independent filmmaking collective composed of family members John Adams, Toby Poser, and their daughter Zelda and Lula Adams have five movies in the last five years and return to Fantastic Fest this year with another distinctive indie horror flick.
The Glorious Dead follows Deb (Toby Poser), a sheriff in a small town, who wakes up on her day off to discover a number of strange occurrences. A local resident has vanished, along with all of his furniture, local cattle have similarly gone missing, the phone lines are down, blood pours out of someone’s faucet, and bizarre flesh-like holes (which resemble assholes, according to the characters) appear across town. As Deb looks into these bizarre events, she faces townspeople who believe a virus is responsible and steadily realizes that the apocalypse may be nye.
Operating like a horror spin on Fargo, the Adams family’s latest genre outing is filled to the brim with intrigue and dread. Taking its time as its protagonist investigates anomalies all around town, The Glorious Dead fascinates with the questions it poses to both Sheriff Deb and, in turn, the audience. How does one even begin to wrap their head around what’s going on in this remote, snowy town? How could blood coming from a faucet tie in with a slew of disappearances tie with asshole-looking holes popping up all around town? Rather than offer immediate answers to these questions, the Adams family let their audience to stew in these inquiries, inviting speculation in a manner akin to the likes of The Empty Man and Coherence.
In playing more like a dread-soaked mystery than a conventional horror film, The Glorious Dead makes for delightfully atmospheric and strangely cozy viewing. The positioning of a female sheriff as the protagonist of a story set in a quiet snowy town immediately evokes memories of Fargo and, like the Coen Brothers’ classic crime comedy, the film could live and breathe on its ambience and environment alone.
An indescribably chilling scene early in the film depicting Sheriff Deb as she silently walks through the home of a missing resident encapsulates the eerie stillness and hair-raising dread of The Glorious Dead. Nothing really happens in the scene, other than Deb walking the halls of an eerily empty home and noticing the absence of furniture, but there’s something so palpably unsettling about it all. It’s the kind of scene that studio execs would probably find to be overly long and in need of editing, or elimination altogether, but, because the Adams family make their films independently, the scene is able to live, breathe, and take up as much time as it needs.
Rare lapses in the film’s atmosphere come in the form of ill-fitting music choices. While the score by H6llb6nd6r, the family’s rock band, brings an exciting, rebellious energy to the film, its heavy guitar use and rock music lessens, rather than amplifies, existing tension. For instance, the aforementioned scene in the empty home effectively builds suspension, which suddenly dissipates when Deb returns to her car and rock music starts blaring out.
The same music is more appropriately employed during a handful of action sequences, which have a kind of homemade, DIY feel to them. Compared to the low-budget polish and sophistication of the rest of the film, these action sequences appear like they’ve been pulled from a different movie entirely.
Then, in the third act, The Glorious Dead trades intrigue and dread for fever dream abstraction. In a manner that would make David Lynch proud, the film opts against giving clear-cut answers for any of the questions it poses, instead opening the door for audience interpretation and theorization. It appears that the Adams family are offering up a more localized, intimate take on the apocalypse, although there is little in the way of clarity to make complete sense of the proceedings.
While the extent to which the film leans into ambiguity may frustrate some, the weird turns it takes afford plenty of inventive, unnerving, and downright disturbing imagery to feast on. Multiple creatures that appear in the film are wonderfully actualized with the use of practical effects and are framed in such a way that makes them as terrifying when they are obscured in the distance as when they are in clear view. There’s shades of Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.’s The Blob, Osgood Perkins’ Keeper, and David Lynch’s Eraserhead all over the visual conceptualization of The Glorious Dead’s most horrifying images.
VERDICT: 6.5/10
Making its U.S. premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, The Glorious Dead finds indie horror’s most prolific filmmaking collective return for an intriguing, dread-filled, and atmospheric take on the apocalypse. The Adams family’s fifth feature film in as many years invites speculation in a manner similar to The Empty Man and Coherence by posing all kinds of intriguing questions to its audience as its protagonist tries to make sense of a series of strange occurrences around town. Taking its time and allowing the audience to soak up the unsettling and bizarrely cozy atmosphere allows the dread to steadily mount and is only hindered by occasional bursts on ill-fitting rock music. The intrigue and dread that surrounds this Fargo-esque indie horror movie eventually gives way to fever dream abstraction in a third act that would make David Lynch proud in avoiding the pull to give the audience answers they so desperately despire. While the extent to which the film leans into ambiguity may frustrate some, the weird turns it takes afford plenty of inventive, unnerving, and downright disturbing imagery to feast on as shades of The Blob, Keeper, and Eraserhead can be spotted in truly horrifying creature design. Anyone familiar with the Adams family’s work will know that the quantity of their output does not hinder the quality, craft, or care of their work. The Glorious Dead is yet another example of the collective’s desire to bring something distinctive to the indie horror film scene, something they once again achieve with glorious success.