All through October, I’ll be posting reviews of the best of the best films in the horror genre released since October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024. As an added bonus, I’ll be adding a secondary review that may be somewhat related to the main review or slightly missed the countdown by inches. Follow along the countdown every day in October. Feel free to agree, disagree, or better yet, give me your own picks for your favorite horror movies of the year. Happy Halloween!

#13 – WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (2023)
Released on November 5, 2023, and is streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime from Yellow Veil Pictures and Wonder Wheel Productions!
Directed/Written by John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/U4MvHEzUYaA
A family of carnies (the Adams Family) travel apart from the circus they perform in, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. But when tragedy strikes, the mute daughter Eve (Zelda Adams) who can only communicate through song, must use dark magic to save her beloved family.

This is the third Adams Family film I’ve seen, and man is that family on a roll. With each film, they develop and perfect their distinctive voice in horror, carving out their own niche that most fail to achieve. Their films are more on the grungier side, depicting a side of life most people either think they are above or simply choose not to know about. They represent the common person, who digs down in the dirt for their work and more often than not, come up with that same dirt as payment from this cruel world. THE DEEPER YOU DIG was a wonderful exploration of guilt and witchcraft, and its follow up HELLBENDER delved into the dark relationship between mother and daughter drowned in a witch’s cauldron. With WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS, the Adams family has delivered their most expansive and boldest film yet.

WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS is almost a musical, with interludes of long quiets and sparse dialog. The film has a music video aspect as Eve only communicates in song. The first moments are shown through her eyes as we are introduced to this world of carnival performers and the strange shanty towns they visit during the Depression era. While the music is modern and often rockin as hell, the simple melodies made by Toby Poser and Zelda Adams themselves, capture the dreary and almost mystical existence of these colorful characters.

While WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS spends an awful lot of time down in the mire with the carnival and it’s performers, introducing them and their acts, the point of the film eventually finds its way to the surface. Because so much production was put into the design of the carnival, it seems the Adams Family want to showcase that for as long as they can before really delving into the point of it all. But when it does, it attempts to capture the randomness of evil and how one can never truly predict where the devil roams, as it is pervasive in almost everything the family encounters. The Adams family themselves are not without fault either as Maggie (played by Toby Poser) is shown to have quite the homicidal streak dating back to her childhood. Maggie is a loose cannon, with Eve and her father, Seven (played by John Adams) often responsible for cleaning up after her murderous rampages. As their trek across the icy terrain of the Midwest continues, you can see how Maggie has become a burden to Eve and Seven, who seem content with simply living with the carnival, but are forced to travel alone to satiate Maggie’s hunger for murder.

But Maggie is not the only one who gets some wonderfully colorful characterization in WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS. I loved John Adams’ role of Seven, a war vet who has seen his fill of bloodshed and chooses to blindfold himself, so he sees no more of it in his life back home. The lengths Seven goes to avoid the horror Maggie inflicts is a testament of how much he loves his wife and how deep his own choice to be ignorant of her murderous actions.

WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS is wonderfully shot with various stylistic formats. Again, this film feels almost like an extended music video as the ethereal dream world blends with the pomp of the performances played out on stage and the unbelievably brutal acts of violence Maggie unleashes. While this story is often seen through Eve’s eyes set to song, there are moments where we enter the minds of the rest of the family with stark black and white sequences taking place in the past. Surreal, bizarre, and wholly beautiful, this is one movie that looks like nothing that’s come before.

I know this might be considered a hot take, but for me, the style of the Adams family is not unlike the style of the often-panned rocker turned director Rob Zombie. Like Zombie, the family seems to surround themselves with strange people that they seem to feel right at home with. They embrace the role of the outcast and seem to prefer to tell stories from that outlaw point of view. Their visuals are bold, hypnotic, and often out of this world, much like Zombie’s vision. But where Zombie fails to get the narrative portions of the film right and refuses to work with a screenwriter that can sift through his style and find a story, the Adams family are able to dive into that darkness and still manage to tell a fascinating yarn at the same time.

It’s a sure bet you’re not going to see another film like WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS again, at least until the Adams Family birth another movie. It may prove to be too surreal and unearthly for some who like their films grounded. But WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS shows what kind of magic the Adams family can do with a little bit of budget. I honestly cannot wait to see where this fascinating troupe of horror filmmakers go next.

Plus – HELL HOLE (2024)
Released on August 23, 2024, and is streaming on Shudder!
Directed by John Adams, Toby Poser.
Written by John Adams, Lulu Adams, Toby Poser.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/WRxBvUN3FDE
A fracking team from America head to Serbia and prepare to drill deep. But upon breaking the surface, they unearth something that defies modern science. Trapped at the site due to flooded roads, the stranded team must deal with a creature that enters the body of men in order to grow and survive.

The Adams Family has been known for their low fi and subtle horror, making HELL HOLE quite the departure from their previous works. Unlike the tender and tragic moments of HELLSEEKER or the heart wrenching scenes in THE DEEPER YOU DIG, or even the bizarre and dream-like spectacle of WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS, HELL HOLE is a bawdy, in your face, horror comedy. And while this is definitely a horror comedy in the vein of EVIL DEAD 2, leaning more towards comedy, if you’re expecting the usual, quiet, subtle horror, HELL HOLE is definitely going to take you by surprise.

The dialog is comfortable and often quite witty. I liked the casual banter between Toby Poser’s character Emily, who acts like the den mother to this motley crew, and her real-life partner Jon Adams, who plays John, the laid back GM of the crew. These scenes show that these two are capable of entertaining all on their own without a drop of blood spilt. There are quite a few scenes like the first one between Poser and Adams. There are also a lot of scenes where the Serbian workers converse back and forth, and the lack of humor in their tone, makes the banter all the more entertaining. All of them fun, but after the monster is revealed and the stakes are dire, this aloof banter feels less appropriate.

The gore, mostly made of practical effects with some CG tweaks here and there. And there’s a lot of it. Not only is the method the creature enters its host unsettling in the most uncomfortable sense, once the monster explodes out of the body of its host of anything life-threatening occurs. Then it scampers away and then enters the next poor soul to repeat the process again. The results are some gnarly body horror involving worms and tentacles. There’s definitely a John Carpenter’s THE THING vibe to the way the monster passes like a contagion and seeing the react to the monster inside of them is part of the fun.

There is an issue with the pacing of HELL HOLE. It’s one of those films that starts and stops with the action with a lot of jaw wagging in between. It makes the flow of the film feel off. Most films have cool down times after scenes of action and carnage, but because everyone is so calm with this monster picking them off one by one, it makes the film feel uneven.

Still Poser is great in the lead as she tries not to be the mother of the group but ends up being the voice of calm and reason to these guys anyway. There are some heartfelt scenes at the end that felt more in the Adams Family wheelhouse. The squid/worm/parasite monster is a lot of fun as it scurries to and fro. The ending was a bit abrupt, but still made sense. And I laughed quite a bit at the subtle and not so subtle humor. Plus, this is as gory as it gets, proving that the Adams family is not only talented but versatile—challenging themselves in new ways with every film. It’s a bit of a stray from their usual output, and that’s not going to sit well with some, but I had a lot of fun with it.

The Best in Horror Countdown 2023-2024
#31 – HERE FOR BLOOD (DESTROY ALL NEIGHBORS)
#30 – THANKSGIVING (THE SACRIFICE GAME)
#29 – MILK & SERIAL (LOWLIFES)
#28 – PROJECT SILENCE (FROGMAN)
#27 – THE SEEDING (DARK HARVEST)
#26 – BEEZEL (THE FRESH HELL TRILOGY)
#25 – ABERRANCE (COLD MEAT)
#24 – OUT OF DARKNESS (ALL YOU NEED IS DEATH)
#23 – ARCADIAN (A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE)
#22 – YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME (GHOSTS OF THE VOID)
#21 – NEVER LET GO (LOVELY, DARK, & DEEP)
#20 – ABIGAIL (BLACKOUT)
#19 – SPEAK NO EVIL (EIGHT EYES)
#18 – BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (LISA FRANKENSTEIN)
#17 – MAXXXINE (SHERYL)
#16 – CUCKOO (AMELIA’S CHILDREN)
#15 – 15 CAMERAS (MIDNIGHT PEEPSHOW)
#14 – DO NOT DISTURB (KILL YOUR LOVER)
#13 – WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (HELL HOLE)

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Music Written by Tim Heidecker
Music & Arrangement by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy https://youtu.be/PDySbxQgZMg
(I do not own this music)