Fantasia 2025 Review: MOTHER OF FLIES is a Story of Life and the Exquisite Beauty of Death

The Adams family is back at Fantasia this year with a brand new film that is just as dark, beautiful, and haunting as we have come to expect. An unearthly fairytale about life and death, about the nature of faith, and about moving the immovable. There is a magic to this film that is like none other, inviting us deep into the woods and asking us to consider our mortality and these slowly rotting sacks of meat and bone that we carry around.

“Life is a rhythm…but death knows only silence…”

These words open Mother of Flies and invite the audience into the grey space between life and death. While the film exists in a supernatural space, the focal point is something that is far too commonplace: cancer. Upon this altar, which is at once both horrifying and ordinary, the Adams group of filmmakers have created a story that is steeped in the decaying beauty of a dark magic.

When Mickey (Zelda Adams) learns that her cancer has returned, she is devastated. Having been given only months to live, she has limited options in front of her. So she takes the one least likely - she connects with a witch who lives alone in the mountains and can offer a path back to life. Mickey and her dad Jake (John Adams) drive out into the wilderness to meet Solveig (Toby Poser), a practitioner of witchcraft, and specifically, necromancy. The promise is that three days with her will turn Mickey’s cancer around and give her the remaining years that are currently balanced on a knife’s edge. But nothing comes without a price, and while Solveig’s services are free of charge, nothing is ever truly free. Mickey and her dad are taking a leap of faith at a point in their lives when faith is perhaps the most necessary, yet the hardest to find. The journey that they embark on is one of healing, but also one of self-reflection, as Solveig brings them to a different understanding of the meaning of life and death.

Mickey is in a unique place in her life, as Solveig is quick to point out. She is young; barely an adult, and with so much life still in front of her. So many things she hasn’t done and has yet to experience. But the tumor in her body is cutting that life short, bringing this person who should have many years left into the shadow of death itself. Mickey is walking a hazy line between life and death. And the film meditates on that theme in some absolutely beautiful ways. Most of the film takes place out in the woods, and we see the best and worst that nature has to offer. Beautiful flowers in bloom, leaves moving gracefully as they are caressed by the wind, the rotting carcass of a baby deer and a pool of wriggling maggots all make their way across the screen. Beautiful images of life in progress, juxtaposed against equally beautifully imagery of death itself.

This liminal space is also where Solveig’s magic lies. This witch is as familiar with death as she is with life, and it is only through having a foot in each world that she can perform the miraculous treatment that Mickey has sought out. 

As Mickey and Jack face the most difficult challenge of their lives, faith becomes another important point of the story’s meditation. Not specifically a faith in god, or in a higher power. It’s something more universal and profound than a specific doctrine. Just faith in something. That something will happen. That stalwart knowledge that you know, without question, the outcome of a course of action before it has reached completion. Mickey has come to Solveig’s woods to undergo the impossible. And she needs to believe it can happen. Jack’s faith isn’t so easy. He loves Mickey and supports her on her quest, but he doesn’t understand it. He knows his daughter is scared and tired, and wants nothing more than to live. He has those feelings too. But the faith is a little harder to find. 

Over the three days they spend with Solveig, their relationship is tested. Though Jack loves and respects his daughter and is there to support her, he just can’t take Solveig and her promises seriously. He wants to be there with Mickey on this journey, but Solveig’s demeanor and witchy ways are officially past his woo-woo threshold. Eventually, Mickey confronts him in a moment of anger, love, and pure desperation. The way the two actors play the scene is beautiful and heartbreaking. This role challenges Zelda Adams as an actor in a way we have not seen in previous performances, and she delivers a performance that is powerful and vulnerable.  

The film is beautiful on every level. The lush cinematography, the vibrant colors, and the way that nature is showcased play perfectly with the themes of life and death. And the way the film meditates on that theme is stunning as well. Death is always present, and is as eternal as its counterpart. And our relationship with it is complex. We will all one day face it, and its presence in our lives is a constant.

Fans of the filmmakers’ other projects are going to be delighted with Mother of Flies. It offers something that is challenging, beautiful and meditative, bringing together an array of feelings and emotions as these characters take this journey into the impossible. As Solveig and Mickey exist in the space between, so does the film itself, inviting us into this liminal space to spend some time examining our own relationship with life, death, and the magic that lies between them.

Movie Score: 5/5