Blood comes out of the taps. The power is gone across an entire small town. Holes are opening up in the ground that nobody can explain, and the dirt is not doing a great job of keeping the dead where they were put. That is roughly where The Glorious Dead starts, and if you have seen an Adams Family film before, you already know that a synopsis is only going to get you so far.
We caught the world premiere as part of our Fantasia 2026 coverage, and this turned into one of those conversations where we both admitted we liked the horror movie more a few days after watching it than we did walking out of the theatre. That happens more often than you would think with these filmmakers.
What Happens in The Glorious Dead
The official synopsis follows a small town sheriff and her deputy who wake up to a changed world where blood drips from taps, people vanish, creatures roam the woods, and the dead rise as the town falls apart. Arthur’s reaction to reading it out loud was “That’s pretty spot on,” which is fair, because that is genuinely what happens.
Toby Poser plays Sheriff Deb McCloud, who wakes up in the middle of an upstate New York winter to find a total blackout. No electricity, no Wi-Fi, no cell service. The generators are dead too.
Like nothing works, but surprisingly the cars work. I don’t know.
Arthur pointed out, which is a fair question that the movie has absolutely no interest in answering. His follow-up was “Don’t think too much about it,” and honestly that is the correct approach to about forty percent of this film.
It is Deb’s day off, and her deputy Mikey (played by Zelda Adams) shows up with a pile of complaints from townspeople that make no sense. Blood in the faucets. People missing. Then the strange holes in the ground, which we are not going to explain because we cannot.
That one you have to watch to understand.
The whole thing plays out over roughly twenty-four hours, with Deb and Mikey driving around a very small community trying to piece together what is going on. What they find is not what you are expecting. It is also, technically speaking, kind of a zombie movie, except it is really not, and every time we tried to explain that in the episode, we ended up talking in circles. That confusion is on purpose.
The Editing, the Score, and That Windshield Wiper Scene
The Adams Family have a specific style, and this film leans all the way into it. Quick cuts, interspersed scenes dropped into the middle of sequences, and a heavy metal score doing a lot of heavy lifting. If you have seen Hellbender, you know the sound.
“Sometimes the cuts are synced to the score, which is great,” Arthur said. There is one moment we cannot stop thinking about. The camera sits inside the car, facing the windshield, and the wipers move in time with the beat of the music. It gives nothing away, and it is such a small thing, but it made us both grin in the theatre. Some people are going to find that unbearably self-indulgent. We loved it.
The creature design deserves its own mention. These films are made on a DIY budget and the practical effects consistently land harder than they have any right to.
The effects in their films are always really cool.
Meaghan said. Wild is the word Arthur used, and wild covers it.
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Where We Landed on Our The Glorious Dead Rating
Here is where it gets interesting, because our first reaction was not our final reaction.
Coming out of the screening, Meaghan was leaning toward a six. The first half to two-thirds of the film worked beautifully, and then the ending arrived, and there was a lot of conflicting feeling about where the story went. A few days of sitting with it moved that up to a seven.
“I feel like I gotta give it its dues,” Meaghan said:
because honestly, genuinely, especially the first parts of the film I really was enjoying and now that I’ve had more time to think about the ending, I think I’m okay with it.
Arthur landed in the same place. “A hard seven, like a very good seven.” His one hesitation is the film’s wrap-up around its message, which does lean into commentary about how it feels to live in America right now. Strip that back a little, and the movie still works.
Arthur actually wanted more of the energy of the final stretch spread through the rest of the runtime, because the last ten minutes go somewhere completely unhinged.
Both of us gave it a 7 out of 10. It is not our favourite thing they have made, and we are still fully on board with what they are doing.
I want them to keep doing what they’re doing, keep making that weird shit.
If you like weird movies, this one is weird. It is weirder than most of their catalogue, and that is the recommendation.
Where to Watch The Glorious Dead
Nothing is confirmed yet, and our hope is a Shudder release, since most of the family’s recent work has landed there. Fingers crossed on that one, because this deserves to be seen by more than a festival crowd.
The Adams Family and Their Sixth Fantasia World Premiere
Quick clarification before anyone gets confused: not that Addams Family. We are talking about the Adams family of filmmakers, one “d,” based in upstate New York. Writer and director John Adams, his wife Toby Poser (who writes, co-directs, and stars), and their daughters Zelda and Lulu Adams. They make the films together, score them together, and show up on screen in them.
There’s something really compelling about every character that she plays.
Meaghan said about Poser, and we stand by that. She is the reason a lot of these films hold together.
If you have not come across their work yet, the run starts with The Deeper You Dig in 2019, then Hellbender in 2021, Where the Devil Roams in 2023, Hell Hole in 2024, and Mother of Flies in 2025. Every single one of those had its world premiere at Fantasia, and The Glorious Dead makes six in a row. That is a genuinely absurd streak for one filmmaking family at one festival.
Meaghan brought up something John Adams said when the family came out to introduce the screening. He described Fantasia as the place where they come to figure out what their movie is actually about. They screen it, they watch the room react, and then they know what they made. We love that. There is no ego in it, just curiosity.
The other thing worth flagging about their filmography is that they refuse to repeat a subgenre. The Deeper You Dig is a supernatural thriller. Hellbender is folk horror. Where the Devil Roams is a period piece set during the Great Depression. Hell Hole is a creature feature with body horror and sci-fi bleeding into it. Mother of Flies is dark fantasy, and it took home the Cheval Noir Award for Best Film at Fantasia in 2025. They touch something different every time.
If you’ve never seen their movies, they always go in a very unexpected direction.
Arthur said, and The Glorious Dead is not the film that breaks that pattern.