13 Sins to Confess with Toby Poser from the Adams Family Films
1
First of all I really wanna thank you for taking the time to this interview. To start, could you briefly introduce yourselves and share how the Adams Family Films project started?
Hi, Valentina! Thanks for having us over to Papaya Horror. We are a family of mother, father, and two daughters - collectively known as the Adams Family (I’m Toby Poser, then there’s John, Lulu and Zelda Adams). We’ve been making independent films since 2010, when the girls were just 11 and 6. We wanted to make a film so we set out for a year on the road in an old caravan, schooling the kids in math and writing and reading and schooling us all in the art of movie making. As filmmakers we bow to the gods of DIY - wearing all the hats from writing and directing to shooting, editing and producing… and we act in most of our films. The music is by our band, H6LLB6ND6R. After several drama features we slammed head first into making horror films, finding ourselves perfectly comfortable and invigorated by genre cinema.
2
Your family has a diverse background in theater, music, and fashion. This rich diversity shines through in your films, where you masterfully blend these elements into a sophisticated and disturbing horror setting with a dark psychological component. How does this eclectic mix influence your work?
That’s a really fun question. When you’re working as such a small unit, every ounce of creative input contributes to the overall weight of our films. We all have certain strengths and passions, and we lean on those to make something we hope is original and worthy of being watched. John comes from a fashion and art background, and Z is on that path as well as a model. She’s always been into photography and drawing, so the two of them are really comfortable behind the camera. Lulu has always had a great eye for detail and truthfulness. She’s also fearless. So when we get to work with her (she’s often halfway across the world), she is like a stuntwoman with a camera, grabbing all the crazy shots from a cliff’s edge or during a blizzard. I come from a background in theater and really enjoy writing and directing, looking at the web of narratives and characters that make up the big picture; soaking up and practicing lessons from every great teacher and director I’ve had. Musically, John is always writing new songs, and the girls and I jump in to float vocals on top. It’s amazing how many songs we’ve made in all kinds of wild places, since we travel so lightly but always have a mic and computer with us. This way, there’s no stopping!
3
Out of personal curiosity, as a family consisting of a wife, husband, and two daughters, how do you manage the creative process and working on set together? Does this unique dynamic create more tension or foster greater complicity?
We’ve been doing this long enough to know how to dance with each other without stepping on each other’s toes. We work hard to get a scene right, but we have the lucky luxury of going back to reshoot. We generally stop shooting when it’s not feeling fun or productive, so we avoid any bad juju. But once the film is done, the joy of traveling together on the festival circuit is the cherry on top of the cake. So the sensation of all the hard work morphs into memories and the good feeling of taking the film on the road. Which generally spurs us on to making the next film almost immediately.
4
Your films intricately weave the family theme, often portraying it at a level of dysfunction despite being very sclose-knit. How does your everyday life influence these depictions on screen?
It’s funny, we love to explore families that are broken or are the underdogs…. but we are quite a happy unit. I tend to feel like we are able to go to those dark places because we are indeed happy… as if there is an important balance between the happiness of our real lives and the trouble or terrors in our characters’ lives. One feeds the other, artistically. These stories of struggle or trauma (even at an extreme level) function in the way a nightmare does. Fiction is a wonderful and super safe practice ground for our collective fears or warped fantasies.
5
Black Arts, eerie presences and bizarre characters are a trademark of yours, especially considering your latest feature film "Where the Devil Roams." What interested you in telling a witchcraft-demonic horror movies? It has become very hard for filmmakers to have a fresh voice or discover a new angle of attack, in trying to tell such a story, and how did you know you had an original and innovative way to tell it?
We sling a lot of spaghetti! That’s what we call brainstorming. Over many meals, car drives, and walks we are constantly hashing out ideas. And often we don’t truly find the scene or the story arc until we are actually shooting it. Sometimes being so small, using very minimal resources, is a gift, because you are forced to think about the heart of a scene, about what really feeds the narrative without lots of bells and whistles to distract. This doesn’t mean our narratives are always black and white - on the contrary, as you mention in your blog on Where the Devil Roams, we often aim to give the viewer a chunk of heart, a sliver of bone, to digest as they will on their own terms. But what’s important is that the storyline makes sense to us (and having spent a lot of time building it together, it usually does), and that is excites us to the core. I love to do research, but it’s more to get my creative juices flowing on this or that demon, this or that legend… and then we reach deep into our most primitive, even childlike imaginations to build our own mythologies. That’s our best bet at being original. We also have naturally twisted humor and tastes, so that helps. Sometimes, we take a cue from what is outside our window or on the edge of the road. Nature and life are better than a writer’s room.
6
In 2023, 'Where the Devil Roams' stood out as my favorite film. This isn't rhetoric; I genuinely appreciated how every aspect was expertly woven together in a highly theatrical and emotionally resonant manner. Could you share insights on how this project came to life, and if there a scene that you enjoyed writing most or that you were picturing the impact it would have on the audience that you were most excited about?
Thank you so much, Valentina! Where the Devil Roams is a film that really wanted to be made. Zelda had the germ of an idea for it, but once she shared that idea it sprouted like wild in all of our hearts and demanded to grow on its own ever-unfolding terms. So much fun to make! Stylistically and period-wise, the Great Depression presented itself because Zelda had been doing self-portraits of herself during the pandemic, and this one shoot was her portraying both Bonnie and Clyde with her grandfather’s 1931 Chevy as the coolest prop ever. And her nightmares about a family of clowns eventually bled into a family of side show performers with a healthy talent for murder… during an era that heightened the desperation of so many. We were very exited about the final shot (which I won’t give away!), because it is a marriage of music, amazing VFX (care of our magician and fifth family member,Trey Lindsay), and the culmination of the film’s mythology. That mythology is the undercurrent of the whole film. It really enriches what is happening on screen - but can be interpreted in various ways. So we are excited when viewers piece it all together from unique perspectives.
7
Was the film's use of biblical and pagan symbolism, like crows and apples, intended as a critique or rebellion against religious fundamentalism, or were these elements selected primarily for their visual and symbolic resonance?
Love this question as well. It’s really a mix. Certain objects have biblical or archetypal symbolism, sure, but we like to defy or subvert religious narratives. The apple often represents knowledge, but these apples are almost always rotten (and some could say this family is composed of three “bad apples”). The birds are triggers for war-traumatized Seven… and they are also, symbolically, psychpomps. Eve wears wings - she too is a kind of psychopomp, an Angel of Death and a strange seamstress sewing together life and death. Rot, in and of itself - and of course represented through the color slowly bleeding from the picture - is a fun concept.
8
Zelda's character, Eve, conveys a constant sense of control, while her demonic side remains invisible to the human eye, but perceptible throughout the film. This led me to reflect on who really controls whom? Is the family devoted to a God, creating almost a cult dedicated to the domination of a higher entity, or is it Eve herself who exerts control over him?
There really is an ambiguity regarding who is pulling the strings, which is why we have this legend about the Devil’s needle (or claw) stuck inside his lover’s heart, and the Devil orchestrating from below how the magic heart might find a new body…. And then we have Eve, who is very handy with a needle and thread. But is she the Devil’s tool or is she using that magic for her own design? This question is more exciting than the answer!
9
You don’t add a lot of backstory. You don’t fill in the blanks. You let the audience do that. Did you feel that there was a risk of leaving things too vague?
Yes, there is a risk. I suppose we wanted to give the audience the freedom to love or hate this family; to challenge the viewer by showing a lot of heart and love and then tempering those things with violence and immorality. We lean on imagery and music to do a lot of the heavy lifting in this film, but we tried to give each family member enough texture under the given circumstances for the audience to make their own conclusions. It’s like tackling a jigsaw puzzle: you spend all this time putting the pieces together, then it’s done and you look at your work… but the best part was finding a thousand tiny connections to get there.
10
Your cinema could be seen as an artistic-experimental endeavor. Personally, I find the themes and settings reminiscent of punk, yet still infused with a notable elegance. What are the primary challenges you face in realizing a production?
Our limitations help us because we have to find creative ways to make things happen. Trey, our VFX wizard, really helps us realize those things we cannot do practically. The biggest challenge might be not getting bogged down in what is expected of us; not getting snagged on the presumption that we should be making “bigger pictures with bigger budgets.” We’re actually quite happy making films the way we are, and even though there is room for collaborating with others (and this past year we did, which was great), we are by no means done exploring this intimate family-based dynamic we have going on. But since our girls are older and off to college and post-graduate school in various places around the globe, that is challenging! So John and I will explore working together on an even smaller scale.
11
As for those audiences watching your films, what do you hope they’re talking about when they walk out of the theater?
We hope they’ve seen and heard something new, something that makes them question how they feel about the characters but that they also might recognize in themselves, albeit through a haunting lens. We hope they like the music and the pictures we’ve painted through the camera.
12
You've just announced that a new movie, "Hell Hole," will be streaming on Shudder this August. Can you share some details about it?
Sure. Hell Hole was our first time working with a big crew and budget. John and I wrote the film with Lulu. It’s a fun, irreverent but also timely story about a fracking crew that uncovers something ancient in the dirt. Trey was employed as well to work the VFX alongside the iconic monster creator, Todd Masters. How cool to work with Todd and his beautiful creature! We shot in Serbia at a really cool former Soviet mining facility in the Rtanj Mountains with a Serbian cast and crew, who were wonderful. So it was a completely new, wild experience for us. We got to make this rock and roll monster movie with a team of collaborators, with a master monster-maker, and we are grateful to Shudder for making it all happen.
13
One last question and my ultimate desire...Besides making films, you are also musicians. Will we ever the chance to see you guys live? Maybe with an interactive performance?
It’s possible! The issue is that we are rarely in the same space these days, to rehearse and prepare. But I really love your idea of an interactive musical experience. Thanks for planting that seed!
Here's below you will find the links where you can find "The Adams Family" online:
Bellissima intervista! Intelligente ed interessante.