Final Rating: 3.5/5
I first became aware of the Adams Family at last year’s Fantasia Film Festival when I watched Hellbender. With the release of their 7th feature film, Where The Devil Roams, the Adams have returned to Fantasia for the third time and brought their DIY horror aesthetic with them yet again. Husband and wife duo John Adams and Toby Poser, along with their two daughters Zelda and Lulu Adams do everything themselves. Zelda, John and Toby wrote, directed and starred and between the four of them they produced, shot, edited, scored, piloted drones, did both practical and special effects, and their band H6LLB6ND6R provided the soundtrack among many other things. Even their dog acted in the film!
Sometime in the Depression era a family, Eve (Zelda Adams), and her parents Maggie (Toby Poser) and Seven (John Adams) work in a traveling carnival. It’s more freakshow than lion tamers though. You have tarot card readers, the severed head of John the Baptist and clowns that wear only black and white makeup. One of the main attractions is a man named Mr. Tipps who cuts off his fingers every day and sews them back on with no side effects due to a deal he is rumoured to have made with the devil. Eve, Maggie and Seven perform a routine where Eve is dressed all in white with angel wings and sings, while Maggie and Seven dressed in all black do a form of interpretive dance on either side of her. What makes this act unique is other than singing, Eve is mute.
As the family travels from town to town on the circuit they struggle to make ends meet, their food is often a single potato, onions and rotten apples. Their car breaks down and their spare tire gets stolen. People want to cheat them out of the cost of renting a room. But this family has a dark secret as well. They brutally murder evil people. A landlord evicts farmers who also work at the carnival so he gets his just desserts, which consists of a cast iron frying pan lodged inside his skull over and over again. Eve takes photos of the bodies post murder and they look like something Jude Law’s creepy Harlen Mcguire would photograph in Road to Perdition.
Eventually after one of their murders of a man who refuses to assist the family when they experience car troubles the family gets sloppy and doesn’t check the whole house for other people. While rummaging through the home owners belongings, Maggie proclaims that there is “a special place in hell for thieves” in response to their spare tire being stolen. Both Seven and Maggie enter a room where a woman (played by the Adams’ other daughter Lulu) takes an axe to the duo. There’s an utterly transfixing shot of Maggie using a shard of broken mirror to stab the woman in the neck and we see Maggie’s reflection in the blade as the life drains away from her attacker.
From there, it is up to Eve to steal the magic from Mr. Tipps and make a deal with the devil to keep her parents alive. But with any deal with the devil comes a steep cost. The film concludes with shocking imagery that wouldn’t be out of place in the classic Tod Browning film Freaks from 1932.
The film is filled with biblical allegories that will keep viewers on their toes, piecing together the meaning of everything. The film has a structure that jumps around and plays with dream-like imagery for significant portions of the film. Everything feels like a hazy nightmare. The colour palette of the film is muted and desaturated making the movie both appear older than it actually is and giving a faded memory feeling.
The family’s DIY charm is on full display as practical effects rule the show. There’s a squeamish scene of some at home dentistry where Seven uses a hammer and nail to bang out a dead tooth from Maggie’s mouth… while blindfolded. There’s also numerous instances of stitches being sewn to reattach body parts with plenty of blood oozing out. The family works on a budget, but as always their films never feel cheap. They’re creative and imaginative with an ethos of putting everything in service of the story. Where The Devil Roams isn’t a jump scare horror film, but one filled with dread and plenty of nausea inducing moments of gore. It’s a wild ride that keeps on impressing.
Where The Devil Roams was seen during the 2023 Fantasia Festival. Thank you to Yellow Veil and Caitlin PR for the screener.
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