“Cult filmmaker” is thrown around too readily, but the Adams family have achieved that status – in the way that August Underground creator Fred Vogel or Begotten maverick E. Elias Merhige did, by using what was to hand to tell stories that no studio would even contemplate. They were backyard cinephiles who burst into the indie horror scene with the microbudget The Deeper You Dig, then unearthed a black magic history of mothers and daughters in the witchy Hellbender. Now, with Where the Devil Roams, they have summoned their bleakest, most romantic, and diabolical creation yet.
Where the Devil Roams may be their biggest film to date, but it’s still most definitely a family affair, with the four core members of the family (mother Toby Poser, father John Adams, and daughters Zelda and Lulu) involved in every production role from script to direction to the score, recorded by Zelda and Maggie’s noise duo H6llb6nd6r.
Family pervades their work thematically, too, and Where the Devil Roams is no exception. In their earlier films, those nuclear unities are shattered from within and without, but they have never been stronger than here. Good thing too, since 1930s carny life is hard on Maggie (Poser), her shellshocked veteran husband Seven (John Adams) and their daughter Eve (Zelda). They make ends meet with their Tin Can Alley booth, but no one cares about their weird, arty song-and-dance act. The crowd all want to see Mr. Tipps (a shockingly sinister Rodd), who can chop off his fingers and sew them back one – not so much Satan’s handiwork as the Devil’s handicrafts. But then the family being bound so close together is worse than them being split apart: This trio leaves a bloody trail as it sweetly travels from town to town, show to show. This is the height of the Great Depression, and who could possibly suspect such insanity from three such soft-spoken drifters?
The Adams have created a mud-splattered phantasmagoria, switching from black-and-white to bleached out and underexposed color. The audience is trapped inside their broke-down 1931 coupe as it rattles across backroads, witnessing their horrors and their warped self-justifications. They are outsiders from the mundane and from morality, shattered and warped in fashions beyond their comprehension, and Zelda and John reflect that in their most abstract work to date.
However, credit must also go to camera operator/visual effects creator Trey Lawson: A collaborator with the Adamses throughout their ongoing horror cycle, he’s part of creating their uniquely gruesome world of corruption and violence. In the Adams’ world, viscera are truly visceral, wounds are ragged, and sores suppurate. It’s a filthy world, too, but the degrading supernatural forces seeping through, and readily embraced by the family, are what’s really corrupting.
Where the Devil Roams may be the family’s most complete movie, and its febrile and claustrophobic horrors will sneak into your nightmares. Cold and cruel, a nightmarish fable that melts funhouse mirrors in the fires of Hell, it ends with one of the year’s most disturbing images, a chilling joke that proves that, yes, it’s all about family.
This article appears in Best of Austin: Restaurants 2023.
