Chattanooga Film Festival 2026 Coverage
Blood & Guts review
Real life and the surreal world of an independent filmmaking family collide.
Festival movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Blood & Guts
Directed by Katie Green and Carlye Rubin
Starring John Adams, Lulu Adams, Zelda Adams and Toby Poser
Blood & Guts Review
We don’t review a lot of documentaries on this site. Simply put…they’re always more interesting to watch than they are to try and review. The general rule of thumb on documentary watching is that if you are interested in the subject of the doc…you’ll probably enjoy enough of it to warrant a watch. The subject(s) of Blood & Guts are of interest to me. Enough to warrant writing up a full review of this documentary. They are, of course, The Adams Family. The independent horror film makers who struck gold with Hellbender and continued to create quality original films in their own unique ways. This movie looks into their backgrounds, their methods and why the Adams way works so well for them.
When The Adams Family released Where the Devil Roams back in 2023…I instantly fell in love with it. I’d seen their breakout hit Hellbender and enjoyed it very much. But Where the Devil Roams captivated me from beginning to end. So much so that the trio of familial directors (John Adams, Zelda Adams and Toby Poser) took home that year’s Scare Value Award for Best Director. The other winners of that award include Jodan Peele, Robert Eggers and Ryan Coogler. Having multiple directors isn’t the norm in filmmaking (though it worked out pretty well for the Coen Brothers). Blood & Guts takes a look into how that potentially complicated setup works for the family…and how they’re wrestling with the reality of its days being numbered.
The main throughline of Blood & Guts is the departure of youngest daughter Zelda from the everyday lives of parents John and Toby. She’s heading off to college and, like her older sister Lulu before her, won’t be around to work on whatever madhouse project the clan comes up with next. It’s a great way to frame the documentary. It allows the movie to show us how John, a former model, and Toby, a working actress, began this family sized production team in the first place. Blood & Guts shows us exactly why and how they began shooting their own independent films with their children. A system that worked quite smoothly from their first attempt through Where the Devil Roams.
The do-it-yourself nature of their process is on display in behind the scenes footage. They handle every aspect of the work you can think of. From writing the stories to playing the main roles to producing the soundtrack to waving branches in frame until they find the right shot. It’s a true collaboration. No one’s ego seems to drive anything…all of their names are going on it anyway.
The documentary takes the time to fill us in on who John and Toby were before they met…and how their lives changed through professional struggles, personal setback and the joys of starting a family. It tells us why they produce horror movies…and it’s, as you’d expect, the same reason most people love horror movies to begin with. A sense of belonging and a genre only limited by your imagination in how you want to tell heightened stories about real things.
When they made the decision to try their hand at independent film production…everything changed. The family enjoyed working together…collaborating on every detail…and doing things their way. Watching John and Zelda work out an original song in the moment is the kind of priceless behind the scenes material any film lover should be dying to watch. It’s true passion and creativity and talent on display with no executive producer telling them why things have to be a certain way.
But…it’s all going to change. Once Zelda heads off to college, John and Toby are faced with changing their process. They make a pretty fun creature feature called Hell Hole with a larger crew. A crew that doesn’t operate the way the family has been producing their work. John, especially, finds it difficult to adapt. Even though I feel like the movie turned out alright…it doesn’t feel like The Adams Family films we’ve come to know and love. John is candid about the problems he’s having with the change…from a production standpoint, at least.
When Zelda and Lulu come home for the summer the family takes the opportunity to try and throw a quick movie together. It never feels right…and they never finish shooting it. If this was a standard narrative film this would be the “dark night of the soul” moment. But this is real life…and it could just be the new normal.
Fortunately, life imitates art sometimes and the family is able to come up with an idea that does work. They reconvene for Mother of Flies…a very good movie much more in line with what we’ve come to expect from the group. Of course, Blood & Guts ends long before the story will. The future of the family, in regard to their filmography, is yet to be written. Long after Blood & Guts wrapped production, they followed up Mother of Flies with a to be released film called The Glorious Dead. John and Toby co-directed and acted in it. Lulu and Zelda acted in it too. What comes after that? We’ll have to wait and see. How they’ll handle it…we’ll just have to wonder.
Scare Value
If you’re interested in a behind-the-scenes look at independent film production, Blood & Guts has some of the most interesting stuff around. The Adams Family’s unique story makes them compelling documentary subjects. The changes that life brings makes their process even more fascinating. Their unique filmmaking process creates great work…and a reliance that threatens to adapt to new circumstances. A candid and involving documentary.
