You’ve
probably never heard of the Adams Family filmmaking group, and no they have
nothing to do with a famous TV show or two hit movies with the late Raul
Julia. No, this Adams Family consists of
director/actor John Adams, his co-director/actress/wife Toby Poser and their actress/daughter
Zelda Adams. Together they’ve formed two
of the more original forays into rustic Southern Gothic with their 2018 short
film The Hatred and a year later the feature length slow burn creeper The
Deeper You Dig. Paired together for
the first time by Arrow Video in a new two-disc blu-ray set, The Hatred and
The Deeper You Dig represent two wintry snowy chillers fraught with
murder, revenge and just a touch of unfinished business tinged with elements of
the supernatural.
In
both films, the main character is played by John Adams himself with his
daughter Zelda more or less playing the same character in each film: a
clairvoyant who bears an eerie kinship with the supernatural. Beginning with The Hatred, a
microbudget Blackfoot territory effort set in the waning days of the Civil War,
a young girl finds her family murdered by deserters. Burning with the need for revenge, she
summons the forces of vengeance in the form of a recently executed soldier
resurrected from the noose upon which he was hung. Together, they set out into the snow-covered
forests of the countryside to wreak bloody havoc and avenge the girl’s loss of
her family.
Running
only an hour, this bloody and violent tale of supernatural vengeance establishes
early on the Adams Family’s penchant for the metaphysical with emphasis on nature’s
uneasy balance with inexplicable forces in the universe. The ideas of conjuring up the dead back into
the world of the living are indeed science fiction but in the world of The
Hatred it comes as natural as waking up in the morning. Much of this is emphasized by the film’s
scenic wide shots shot by the family members at different intervals of the snow-covered
hills and plains. Then there’s the
echoey reverberating atonal score rendered by John Adams himself, with sounds
so eerie it is likely to give you goosebumps.
All
of this of course was a dress rehearsal for the real enchilada which came in
the form of their feature film The Deeper You Dig, a suspenseful creeper
about a clairvoyant mother named Ivy (Toby Poser) who lives alone with her
daughter Echo (Zelda Adams). One night
Echo goes sledding down the hills, only to crash into a vehicle driven by the
drunken Kurt (John Adams) to her death.
Fearing incarceration, Kurt proceeds to hide the body in between renovating
his house. Soon however, these three
characters will intersect again as the thinly veiled barrier between the living
and the afterlife begins to fold upon itself.
Far
more fully fledged and engaging than The Hatred which at times
threatened to meander in atmospherics, The Deeper You Dig while
stumbling somewhat in the third act is a taut mixture of the metaphysical and
the shockingly gory with more than a few hints at demonic possession. This time around, the tension is much greater
with the perpetrator of a horrific crime living just down the road from the
victim’s mother. As with The Hatred however,
this is from the ground up a family affair with Toby Poser, John and daughter
Zelda Adams doing everything in front of and behind the camera. Makeup effects are much more developed this
time around and the film plays more loosely with the rules of forces beyond our
comprehension.
Though
neither film necessarily proved to be a home run with me, these two films
represent a unique chapter in the Southern Gothic subgenre and the emergence of
a truly interesting introduction of bona fide homegrown talent. That everyone involved onscreen is as fully
invested in these productions as they are offscreen is kind of inspiring and
oddly heartwarming to consider. There’s
a genuinely unique flavor to this kind of deeply southern fried rural horror
clearly made with love from a new and promising filmmaking family. I may have been lukewarm to both films but
there’s no denying this group as a fresh voice in contemporary indie horror.
--Andrew Kotwicki
