The Adams Family are among the most exciting indie horror filmmakers working today. The prolific family of hands-on filmmakers – father John Adams, mother Tobey Poser, and daughter Zelda Adams – share writing, directing and acting credits on all of their films, including 2021’s Hellbender.
Where the Devil Roams is the family’s most ambitious film yet, replete with a large supporting cast and a Depression-era period setting. The sprawling nature of the story gives the film an epic scope, but it also chips away at the cohesive structure, as the film winds up feeling more like a series of vignettes that fail to build to a satisfying, cohesive whole.
Maggie (Poser) is an uneducated woman married to Seven (John Adams), a former war medic. She’s impulsive and prone to violence, while he faints at the sight of blood. The pair have a regular gig as carnival performers with their daughter Eve (Zelda Adams), who sings beautifully, but is otherwise mute.
The trio are part of a large collective of performers, including multiple real life showmen, conjurers, clowns and acrobats. Alas, the family is not the most popular act; that honor belongs to Mr. Tibbs (Sam Rodd) whose macabre performance involves cutting off his fingertips with scissors, much to the delight of the demanding crowd.
Early in the film Tibbs spots Eve shoplifting, and threatens her with the statement, “Careful or I might clip those nimble fingers.” Later, when Eve spies on him as he recovers from his act, Tibbs brazenly explains the deal he made with the devil that allows him to sew his fingers back on. He warns her “not to get any ideas,” but the heart he keeps confined in a box with a needle and thread proves too tantalizing, particularly for a young woman with ambition.
There’s both danger and sex embedded in Tibbs and Eve’s relationship, and their scenes together are electric. Tibbs is the devil figure to Eve’s angel, an idea made visually explicit by the virginal white, winged costume she wears on stage. Their relationship is by far the most compelling one in the film, though Where the Devil Roams doesn’t seem to know it, judging by how Tibbs is relegated to the periphery of the narrative.
The reality is that no one in the film is clean or pure. While the family makes their living performing at the carnival, they supplement their income by disposing of bad people they meet driving up and down the country roads. The murders tend to fall on Maggie, who has a penchant for abrupt, violent acts. And while Seven appears to abide by the Hippocratic oath, his recurring WWII nightmares hint at the character’s dark, secret history. Eve, meanwhile, isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty when necessary, particularly when her parents run into trouble.
The period aesthetic feeds into the idea of a lawless land. Large portions of the film take place outside, with the highway acting like a dividing line between the civilized world of wealthy landowners and the rugged forest and rivers where the family frequently camps and cleans.
Iris lenses, spinning newspapers and desaturated grey filters lend the film an appropriate old-timey vibe, although the film’s uncertain geography fails to create a fully fleshed out world. How far does the family travel from the carnival and where in the country have they gone? Where the Devil Roams lacks a sense of place until the film approaches its climax when the family performs at the Buffalo Horror Show.
There’s also a cyclical element to the film, thanks to its use of rhyming dialogue and psalms, which highlight how devilish deals lend themselves to binding contracts, as well as religious dogma. The film opens with a legless performer taking the stage of a packed theatre to deliver a three-minute monologue about Abbadon, the language of which is recycled/reused in radio broadcasts and by Tibbs throughout the film. Not only does this colorful language give the film an operatic flare, it makes the characters feel as though they’re in a fight for their souls (although comparisons to HBO’s two season wonder Carnival are therefore impossible to avoid).
The problem is that too much of the narrative feels episodic. With only slight rising action, Where the Devil Roams feels listless; it doesn’t feel as though the film is building towards something. The Buffalo Horror Show, for example, appears abruptly out of nowhere, and although the carnival recurs, long swaths of the film finds the family travelling solo with no mention of the other performers. It’s not until a murder unexpectedly complicates the family’s situation and Eve must act on Mr. Tibbs secret pact that the film finally finds its unifying element, but by then more than two thirds of the film has passed.
While the period costumes and camera techniques successfully evoke the time period, Where the Devil Roams ultimately needed a tighter focus. There’s good stuff here, but not all of it works.
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