Fantastic Fest Review: The Glorious Dead

There’s a certain cadence to the films of the Adams Family. Not that they’re predictable. It’s that, even after a run as genre favorites and festival favorites since their 2019 breakout, The Deeper You Dig, their films are instantly recognizable. There’s a certain lived-in griminess, a real-world bleakness balanced against wily intellect and magickal instincts, a willingness to let the image breathe, that signature blown-out color palette and extreme contrast between light and shadow, and of course the instantly recognizable guitar-and-drums grind of their musical side project, H6llb6nd6r.

It’s also in the appearance of Toby Poser, this time as Sheriff Deb McCloud, the only law enforcement in one of those corners of rural New York that’s been on its uppers since the Borscht Belt dried up. She’s only got her one deputy, Mikey (Zelda Adams), to help her at work, and no help at home since her husband, Hank (John Adams, shown only in photos of happier times), is three months dead. All she wants is her Sunday off, but that’s not going to happen, what with the missing cows, embalmed corpses refusing to lie down, speeding drivers, strange gunshots, mysterious creatures up in the woods, and all this without coffee because the electricity’s gone dead. No one should have to endure this kind of cryptid and revenant nonsense without caffeine, especially when it won’t stop snowing.

This is where the inherent mordant humor that is the Adams Family’s signature shines through The Glorious Dead. Even as it becomes clear that something strange is happening, something so odd that Deb can’t ignore it and just go back to bed, all the locals come up with their own reasons for why all these grisly unexplained phenomena are taking place. Even as she finds herself face-to-face with abominations, Deb’s also restraining her eye rolls at the locals who want her to fix the blood coming out of their faucets. Since no one wants this to be the next COVID or the Rapture, keeping order in these times is no small challenge. Everyone’s apocalypse is the important one, it seems. As the previous sheriff, Jude (Judy Rosen), supportively tells Deb, “Good fucking luck.”

A quixotic, idiosyncratic, and giddy mix of The Living Dead, Fargo, and Letterkenny, The Glorious Dead never feels derivative. It does, however, fit perfectly into that niche subgenre best described as “The X-Files if Mulder and Scully never turn up,” with Deb navigating what could be the end of the world and whiny neighbors and Mikey throwing out crazy ideas as a way to navigate this insanity.

Though there’s events bizarre enough to give even Charles Fort a fit, there are no histrionics. The Adams Family – parents John and Toby, and daughters Lulu and Zelda – all wear multiple hats, and most of the rest of the cast are non-professional actors. This gives the performances a sort of understatement that makes the strange events even stranger, but makes the story feel more personal. Maybe our own individual ends of the world are the only ones that matter after all.

Fantastic Fest runs Sept. 17-24 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar. Badges and info at fantasticfest.com. Follow our coverage at austinchronicle.com/fantastic-fest.

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