There have been many famous filmmaker families, but they tend to spread across generations and rarely work together: Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter Sofia Coppola, Ivan Reitman’s son Jason Reitman, and David Cronenberg’s son Brandon Cronenberg all come to mind.
The Adams family is an extreme exception to filmmaking nepotism, though. Parents John Adams and Toby Poser work together with their 18-year-old daughter Zelda Adams to write, star in, direct, shoot and edit their films, and the three essentially share duties on every aspect of the pictures they’ve been creating; even their older daughter Lulu Adams gets in on the action sometimes. Each person doesn’t have an assigned task so much as a fluid relationship to the finished product, like the dance of skilled chefs in a busy kitchen, hopping between stations in a sweaty waltz to put out a beautiful dish.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Bending Film Toward Real Life
The Adams’ latest dish is Hellbender, and it’s gotten them the most attention they’ve ever received together. Like the gothic sitcom family with a name woefully similar to the Adams’, the films the family makes are creepy and kooky, and Hellbender is no exception. It’s a wild, punk-rock ride through psychedelic imagery, deep allegory, gross-out effects and a unique coming-of-age story, and Zelda Adams is at the center of it all. Set to stream on Shudder on Feb. 24, the film follows the young Izzy (Zelda) as she learns the secrets of her mother (Poser) and discovers herself to be a ‘hellbender,’ a witch-like, matrilineal creature with incredible powers. Much of the movie follows the tension between how the mother has raised Izzy to protect her from the truth, versus the inherent ‘hellbending’ nature of the girl, and the results see Izzy working to grow up and move past her childhood. Zelda sees some similarities with her own life:
Shudder
I’m 18 years old, I’m a senior right now. So, I’m about to graduate, and hopefully go off to college. I’m about to leave my home and leave my parents quite soon. And, you know, Izzy is getting ready to come into her own and leave her mom too, soon. And you know, the mom doesn’t want to let go, and I’m sure my mom doesn’t want to let go of me either. It’s kind of beautiful […] Also, I think I really relate to Izzy because, you know, this film was shot during COVID, and that was a time when a lot of us spent a lot of time alone, thinking about ourselves and who we are and what our identity is, and I think I learned the most about myself while I was making Hellbender and I think Izzy was too, learning about her true nature.
Another parallel between Hellbender and Zelda is how the film explores the concept of ’nature vs. nurture.’ The character of Izzy is part of a lineage which defines her nature to an extent, even if her mother attempts to suppress it by keeping her away from other people (in a nice nod to COVID) and refraining from telling her the truth.
Finding Her Own Vision
Zelda Adams has been in her parents’ films since she was six years old, and all of her work has been associated with their fruitful collaboration. One could say that it’s nearly hereditary, and while her relationship with her family is obviously a productive and beautiful one, there is a similarity here between it and Hellbenders exploration of how people come into their own and find their identity beyond simply how they were raised (and if that’s even possible). Though she loves the collaborative process, as Zelda has gotten older, she has developed a vocabulary for her own voice and vision.
That was one of our favorite themes in this movie, covering the topic of what we’re taught versus what we truly are. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the poem about the wolf and the lamb. Like, it’s a wolf’s nature to eat a lamb. Is the wolf wrong for that or is it their nature, and who determines what’s right and wrong?
Adams Family Values
For now, however, she loves being able to work with her family, especially since the Adams have such a unique take on how to make a movie. It’s a democratic process, something very foreign to the hierarchical world of film production (and parenting, for that matter), and it doesn’t stop when someone yells “cut.” The world of filmmaking bleeds into and probably benefits from the typical minutiae of their everyday life; even when Zelda’s just eating cereal, the possibility of creative epiphanies and conversations is ever-present.
I think that I definitely have different perspectives on cinematography. When I was younger, I didn’t really know how to put it into words. But as I began to watch more movies and really become way more involved in the directing and cinematography part of the filmmaking process, I learned that I love movement and I started finding out what technology will give me that movement. So, I told my parents, “hey, I want to buy a Mavic Air 2, I want to get the steady cam,” because before that, our film prior to this one, The Deeper You Dig, we really just had a tripod. So the only movement we were getting was, you know, panning, so it was such a fun step up with Hellbender where I got to bring in my kind of moving vision. I love movement.
I definitely love, love, love the collaborative process, and I hope to keep working with my parents. I know that after high school, I would love to make some personal projects and maybe learn how to work with people who I’ve never worked with before. That seems like a really exciting idea to me, and also working with technology I’ve never experienced before, like bigger RED cameras or artificial lighting. I’ve never used that in my life before because my family and I work on such a raw small, you know, production size.
I think I’ve honestly learned the most about myself and my parents mainly through the filmmaking process, because really, our life and filmmaking are totally combined. They’re not like two detached worlds. You know, we wake up, have breakfast and go out and shoot, come home and edit and then re-shoot if we need to. If anything, I’ve really just learned like how we each have our own quirks that add to [this] symbiotic beast as filmmakers. You know, my dad loves saying, “I want to cut someone’s head off [in a shot].”. And then Toby’s like, “Well, let’s figure out why we should do that. Narrative wise, I’ll write a scene that makes it make sense.” And then I’ll say, “Well, I want to figure out how to film someone cutting someone’s head off.” So we all each have our little angles that have combined perfectly. It’s really fun.
Horror Heaven
Regardless of it being a family affair, Zelda’s personal vision has shined through in several of Hellbender’s scenes, especially in some of its cinematography (like the borderline-supernatural drone shots), the intimacy of its mother-daughter dialogues and the songs she performs with her band H6llb6nd6r, yet another family affair. While all of these aspects set the film apart, it is still ultimately a horror film, and one that has been embraced by gorehounds in the horror community (and beyond, if its 100% rating with 28 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes is any indication). While she started out doing more dramatic work with her parents, this and their other recent horror films have ingratiated them into the horror community in a wide-open embrace, to the extent that horror streaming platform Shudder has welcomed them warmly.
Honestly, it’s kind of boring [to say], but I’m really just so grateful for the life that they’ve allowed me to have, like to grow up and make movies [is] something I’m extremely, extremely grateful for. Even since I was six years old, when we started making films, they always considered me an equal, like my perspective was always equal to theirs. And that’s something I really hope I can continue with, you know, the generations [after] me. We all have such great perspectives on the world around us, and if we can combine them, I think that’s that’s going to be a great worldly view of everything.
There also seems to be no limits to where the Adams’ go next, and at 18, Zelda Adams has the ability to bend her path wherever she wishes to take it.
I love the horror genre, and not only because I’ve been watching horror since I can ever remember. It’s just so ripe with creativity. There are no rules. You can do whatever you want. We made four dramas before we ventured into the horror realm and, you know, that was really fun. You can tell a beautiful story, but after a while, it was really hard for them to get traction if you didn’t have like Brad Pitt in them […] So when I was around 12 or 13, I told my dad “hey, let’s let’s make a horror movie where I just kill a bunch of grown men.” So we did that. It was fun, and then we got into some festivals, and we started associating with the horror crowd, and they’re just so involved, and they love every single detail that you put into your movies, and they’re so kind. At first, I was really scared of like, ’the horror crowd.’ I was like, “they’re gonna be scary, they’re not gonna like me.” But I think that they’re the most welcoming group that you’ll ever meet. And I really, I know that we’re going to keep creating horror movies, because it’s just a world where you can do whatever you want. There are no limits.
