Look, if you grew up with VHS hiss, creaky wooden floors in indie horror, and the vague sense that everyone in the ’90s pretended to be cooler than they actually were, Mother of Flies is very much your kind of nightmare. It’s not a jump-scare rollercoaster or a neon-lit A24 mood board — it’s slow, earthy, and weird in that “your friend who lives in a converted barn and brews their own kombucha” kind of way. Mickey’s diagnosis hangs over the film like a bad prognosis you can’t swipe away, and from the first scene you know this isn’t going to be a tidy, comforting deathbed drama. Instead, it’s a muddy, ritual-soaked descent into something ancient, messy, and deeply uncomfortable.
Here’s the setup: Mickey (Zelda Adams) has a grim medical diagnosis and zero interest in going quietly into that good night. She heads into the woods with her anxious, well-meaning father (John Adams) to seek out Solveig (Toby Poser), a mysterious recluse who practices a form of death magic that feels older than Christianity and twice as unforgiving. Over three harrowing days, Mickey submits to Solveig’s extreme rituals — part healing, part curse, all nightmare fuel — while buried family secrets claw their way to the surface. As the boundary between life and death starts to fray, Mickey discovers that some truths are only revealed when you’re already halfway across that threshold.
Zelda Adams carries the film with a rawness that feels earned, not theatrical. Mickey isn’t some noble suffering angel — she’s scared, stubborn, and kind of prickly, which makes her journey into Solveig’s world feel less like “chosen one” destiny and more like a desperate Hail Mary. John Adams, as her father, gives off that familiar Gen-X dad energy: loving, out of his depth, and pretending he’s fine while clearly not fine. Their dynamic is quietly heartbreaking, like a family that knows time is short but doesn’t have the emotional vocabulary to say it out loud.
And then there’s Toby Poser as Solveig, who basically embodies every “don’t go into the woods” warning you ignored as a kid. She’s magnetic, unsettling, and absolutely not here to make you feel better. The rituals Mickey endures are less about flashy horror and more about endurance, decay, and the idea that healing might look indistinguishable from harm. It’s the kind of movie where you squirm not because something jumps out at you, but because you’re watching someone willingly submit to something deeply, existentially wrong.
Where the film falters — and why it lands at a solid four stars instead of five — is pacing and opacity. Sometimes it leans so hard into ambiguity that it starts to feel less like mystery and more like “we didn’t quite know how to stick the landing.” There are moments where you wish the film would just tell you what the hell is going on instead of letting the fog roll in for the fifteenth time. Still, Mother of Flies lingers in your brain long after the credits roll, like a bad dream that was strangely beautiful — messy, melancholic, and committed to its own unsettling vibe. Not perfect, but haunting… which, honestly, feels very Gen-X appropriate.
Mother of Flies streams on Shudder beginning January 23rd.
MPAA Rating: Unrated.
Runtime: 92 mins
Director: John Adams; Zelda Adams; Toby Poser
Writer: John Adams; Zelda Adams; Toby Poser
Cast: John Adams; Zelda Adams; Toby Poser
Genre: Folk Horror
Tagline: A Shudder Original
Memorable Movie Quote: "Everybody around here knows her. She can trick death."
Distributor: Shudder
Official Site:
Release Date: January 23, 2026
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: When a young woman faces a deadly diagnosis, she seeks dark magic from a witch in the woods - but every cure has costs.
