By George & Josh Bate
The Adams 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.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to speak with The Glorious Dead director/writer/star Toby Poser and stars Lulu Adams and Zelda Adams about the origins of their latest venture, how they maintain quality while releasing so many films, its more intimate depiction of the apocalypse, drawing influence from Fargo, and more.
Just last year, the Adams family brought Mother of Flies to Fantastic Fest. A dark horror movie about a terminally ill college student seeking a ritualistic cure from a reclusive witch, the film won the Cheval Noir competition at the Fantasia International Film Festival and was praised for its blend of folk horror and Cronenbergian body horror.
With The Glorious Dead, the family filmmaking team wanted to tackle a decidedly different kind of film, albeit one still deeply rooted in the horror genre. “Well, we had just made a super personal cathartic film, Mother of Flies, and John [Poser] and I, none of us like to let grass grow under our feet,” Toby Poser explained. “So, we’re like, let’s make a new one real fast, but instead of it being about an insular family, let’s make it more about a community. And because there’s a lot of stuff going on in America right now, we thought this is a good time to make a conceptual, visual conversation about what it feels to wake up in America.”
To accomplish this fear, the family looked inward, deciding to shoot their film in their tiny home town and, through the lens of horror, explore the fraught relationships among neighbors that characterize modern America. “[The background of the film is] definitely familiar, because we are from that small town and we know all of our neighbors and sometimes we’re very divided and sometimes we want the same things and we fear the same things and there are lots of guns where we live,” Poser said. “There are some real fears right now where there’s division in the country. “It seemed like the perfect place in a small town that is just in the crucible. It’s just the perfect opportunity to show conflict and we know that’s what it would look like for us.”
To most succinctly describe The Glorious Dead, the word ‘intriguing’ feels appropriate. The film fascinates with the questions it poses to its protagonist, Sheriff Deb, and the audience as she investigates a series of seemingly unconnected anomalies all around their small town. Positioning a female law enforcement figure as the lead character of a film set in a snowy remote town immediately brings to mind Fargo, the Coen Brothers’ crime classic from 1995, but The Glorious Dead approaches this delightfully cozy atmosphere from a religious horror perspective.
“We wanted to make a cool winter film,” Poser remarked. “Obviously, there’s a female sheriff, so definitely Fargo was influential and we love that film. Also, religious horror is fun. We’re not a religious family, but we talk about these existential and conceptual things all the time. And I think that the Bible gives us lots. It’s a rich field to mine. So we were like, ‘You know what? Let’s play on some of the Christian lore and bring it into this little tiny town.”
Poser added, “If you like religious horror by way of Fargo and a little bit of The Thing, you’ll like The Glorious Dead.” The director, star, and writer couldn’t be more spot on. Throw in a bit of The Blob, in addition to the films Poser mentions, and you arrive upon the Adams family’s latest film.
The Thing and The Blob are particularly noteworthy comparisons as The Glorious Dead features some remarkably inventive and unsettling creature design. “We have a lot of leftover body parts and prosthetics and skin that we use from this guy James Bell, and we recycle them in all of our movies,” Poser said while explaining how they brought their new film’s creature to life. “We had a ton of them. And so we wanted the monsters to be human-like, familiar. They’re creepier the more familiar they are, because it’s like humanity can be the monster sometimes.”
Lulu Adams, who plays deputy Mikey in the film, also commented on how The Glorious Dead drew inspiration from seedy cop shows. “We were kind of inspired by those cop shows that you watch super late at night when you stay in a hotel, where you’re just like, ‘God, this day is insane and I can’t believe I’m watching it at 3am,’” Lulu Adams said. “A lot of our past movies were very theatrical in their visuals. We’d set up these beautiful shots on a tripod. And this one we wanted to shoot a lot of it on our steady cam, our Ronin S, and just go crazy with the movement and be a little less picturesque with everything.. Especially because the film takes place over the course of one day, we wanted the movement of the visuals to match the chaos of the day.”
There’s an old saying that says, “Never work with friends or family,” warning people to not mix personal bonds with business as this could blur boundaries and potentially harm relationships. Clearly, the Adams family don’t buy into this adage (neither do the writers of this article, who are brothers and do all of our film coverage together!).
“First of all, you learn so much about your family and your friends when you work with them,” Lulu Adams said while reflecting on the benefits of working with her family. “And it’s also really fun, because you get to explore themes that you guys are all experiencing together. It feels just very intimate and cool. And you learn how to work well with your family and friends too, because you’ve grown up with them and know what works well.”
Zelda Adams added, “We have that advantage of knowing each other’s specialties as well and that we all believe in each other and we can also go home and process things together, which is such an advantage. Like, ‘Oh, I didn’t really feel great about that scene or I want to do this or I want to try something new and we just wait till we’re done having sandwiches and the clouds come back out.”
When asked to describe their new film in three words, Toby, Lulu, and Zelda all used one of their selections to reflect on the conditions of their shoot. ‘Winter,’ ‘Cold,’ and ‘Snow’ were referenced by Lulu, Zelda, and Toby respectively. Lulu also threw in the words ‘Asshole’ and ‘Cop,’ while Toby offered the word ‘Monster.’ Zelda rounded off the question by adding the words ‘Chaos’ and ‘Fuck,’ both of which pretty accurately capture the hell on Earth kind of day Sherrif Deb has in the film.
In discussing who they think the film will most resonate with, sisters Lulu and Zelda offered witty responses. “If you like to drink black coffee on a cold winter day, you’ll like The Glorious Dead,” Lulu said. Meanwhile, Zelda remarked, “If you like women kicking ass, you’ll like The Glorious Dead.”
The Adams family’s fifth feature in as many years continues to solidify their status as indie horror’s most prolific filmmaking collective. Their latest outing finds them craft an intriguing, dread-filled, and atmospheric take on the apocalypse, filled with Fargo-esque coziness and a fever dream of a third act that would make David Lynch proud. 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.
Thankfully, if you weren’t at Fantastic Fest to watch The Glorious Dead, don’t worry, because the film was recently acquired by Shudder and is set to debut on the streaming service in the near future.
Watch our full interview with The Glorious Dead filmmakers Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, and Lulu Adams below….
