THE GLORIOUS DEAD

****

Directed by John Adams & Toby Poser. 

Starring Toby Poser, Lulu Adams, Zelda Adams, John Adams, Judith Roberts.

Horror, US, 80 Minutes.

On a cold winter morning, the electricity seems to have gone off, the taps drip blood and people have seemingly vanished without a trace. For Sheriff Deb McCloud (nice name!), it’s a shitty start to a shitty day, and it’s only going to get worse from here. As we follow Deb (Toby Poser) and her young deputy Mikey (Zelda Adams) around the snow covered small town trying to figure out what exactly is going on, the biblical implications gradually rise to the surface causing a quietly stressed (and increasingly bloodied) Deb to realise the world may have quietly come to an end.

This new film from The Adams Family stands in complete contrast to its predecessor MOTHER OF FLIES. Where that film was a deliberately paced and mournful piece on facing your mortality, coloured and shaded in varying dark hues, this is a swifter paced piece, with bright white bloodstained snow gradually filling the screen. There are still musings on life and death, but they never bog the film down or come across as cod-philosophy, instead coming across as naturalistic and easy going as Deb chats with Mikey and the other town residents she encounters on this Hellish day. Comparisons to the Coen Brothers FARGO and that film's heroine Marge Gunderson can also be made here, not just because of this film's visual palette but also because of the tender nature at the heart of all of this. Deb, grieving a personal loss, is a good person trying her best to do good things, something that becomes increasingly difficult as Bosch-inspired nightmarish baby faced creatures made from patchworks of flesh stalk the woods and a small, paranoid militia threatens to take power away from the law that tenuously holds everything together.

Despite all of this, the film also stands out as the funniest and most humorous film yet from The Adams Family. A lot of laughs rise from the naturalistic, easy going dialogue that is expertly delivered by its cast. That the film never feels the need to rise to hysterics, despite its doom laden atmosphere and a ferociously executed action set piece that arrives late in the game, is also very much to the film’s credit. The family unit brings a quiet nature to all of their films that still manages to impress and imprint itself onto the viewer's mind with an immediate impact that lingers long in the memory.

The final shot of the film sums up everything in a blackly humorous manner that is also quietly devastating in its own way. During the Q&A of its FrightFest premiere, co-director John Adams described the “punk rock” energy and aesthetic that he wanted to display here after the deep and dark nature of MOTHER OF FLIES. It certainly comes across in great fashion, especially with the heavy guitar and drum driven score of the families band H6LLB6ND6R providing the soundtrack. Fast, funny, deep and gruesome this is yet another distinctive and massively entertaining entry in the family's eclectic and completely original catalogue of films.

Iain MacLeod