The Glorious Dead

The Adams Family are a prolific outfit though that generally doesn’t have a major effect on the quality of filmmaking and storylines. That’s probably because it appears that creative duties are rotated so there’d never a feeling of repetition or staleness creeping in.

Here the presence of local coppers and the wilds of a rural winter provide a Fargo touch to the proceedings. Sheriff Deb McCloud (Toby Poser) is pulled out of bed on her day off by deputy Mikey (Zelda Adams). The town has stopped functioning. There’s no water, just blood in the pipes, with all the power is down there’s not much Deb can do as she drives around the neighbourhood.

There’s also disappearances of people and animals, the dead coming back to life and sightings of creatures that are made up of patches of flesh roughly sewn together. Add to there are ruptures in the ground described as ‘a big red a**holes’.

This all creates feelings of fear and paranoia leading to the formation of vigilante groups who have no interest in the rule of law as Deb finds out. A group of people, seemingly already disenfranchised, that have just had enough of being told what to do by anyone.

Written and directed by Poser and John Adams they have blended a number of issues that though ostensibly USA centred inevitably work their way beyond those borders. So there’s the Covid and vaccine paranoia of the vigilantes blocking access. And the insidious evangelism that is apparently starting to become more virulent and aggressive making inroads into everyday life whether wanted or not.

The sequence headings of The Crows, The Fire and The Clouds do lead somewhere and the theological argument between Deb and her evangelised mother Carol (Judith Roberts) proceeds what could be interpreted as ‘The Rapture’. However it’s not that clear that the Adams’s are dipping into the 'Revelations' handy horror handbook of plots as many have gone before.

The Glorious Dead had its International Premiere at Tubi FrightFest London 2026.