WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS (2023)

Studio:   Tubi
Director: Zelda Adams, John Adams, Toby Poser
Writer:   Zelda Adams, John Adams, Toby Poser
Producer: Toby Poser
Stars:    Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, John Adams, Lulu Adams, Sam Rodd

Review Score:

---

Summary:

A family of killer carnies haunted by horrible trauma uses devilish magic to transform their act as well as themselves.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Eve, a teenager who is mute except for when she sings, performs with her father Seven, a former country doctor with PTSD from his time as a soldier in World War I, and mother Maggie, who is haunted by childhood memories of killing her mother for killing her baby brother, to a disinterested audience as part of a traveling carnival. Following their show, the family works a midway game where they recognize a man who accuses them of running a scam as the banker who took their farm.

The crowd and fellow carnies alike marvel at Mr. Tipps, a popular magician whose act involves cutting off his fingers. Afterward, Eve visits his tent. Mr. Tipps tells Eve how his fascination with circuses coupled with a search for real magic led him to "Broken Cain," a magician who told Tipps the story of Abaddon and the magic heart, an occult item capable of reanimating severed limbs. Tipps stole the heart from Cain and made a deal with the devil to acquire its magic, although he deliberately avoids doing anything more than cutting off and reattaching his fingers.

A fight breaks out among carnies playing a card game after work. The sight of blood causes Seven to enter a catatonic state where he relives gruesome memories from wartime until Maggie breaks up the fight and shakes Seven out of his trance.

Maggie, Seven, and Eve drive to the house of the banker they recognized earlier. With Seven blindfolded so the violence doesn't trigger him, Maggie murders the banker's wife and beats the banker to death with a frying pan. Eve takes photographs of the corpses.

Maggie, Seven, and Eve continue killing crooked elites like a corrupt judge and an inside trader as they travel across the area. Among other events along the way, Seven teaches Eve how to perform amputations on a doll.

Tired of camping outside in the snow, Maggie, Seven, and Eve stop at a seemingly deserted farm. Upon finding the trio sleeping in his barn, Norwegian farmer Erik Johansen invites the family into his warm house. Mistaking Johan for a German like the soldiers who traumatized Seven, Maggie stabs Johan through his throat with a fireplace poker despite his hospitality.

The family's car breaks down. Looking for help at the closest house, the three of them end up murdering a cheating husband and his two young mistresses before dressing up in the man's fancy clothes. Unexpectedly, a third young woman brandishing an ax surprise attacks Seven and Maggie by hacking off various limbs. Maggie still manages to kill the girl by stabbing her in the neck with a shard of broken mirror glass.

Eve brings her parents' mutilated bodies back to the carnival where she steals the magic heart from Mr. Tipps. Eve uses the heart's magic to reattach Seven and Maggie's severed body parts.

Maggie, Seven, and Eve put on a public performance where they pull off their stitched limbs in front of a delighted audience, which upsets Mr. Tipps. During a subsequent confrontation with Eve over the stolen heart, Tipps warns that because she is mute, Eve will be unable to say the accompanying spell that's needed to prevent reattached limbs from rotting.

Maggie and Seven cut off an arm and a leg from a woman who stole their car's spare tire. Eve uses the woman's limbs to replace the rotting ones on her parents. Maggie, Seven, and Eve continue replacing rotting limbs using body parts from other victims as the carnival tour continues.

Due to his rotting flesh, Seven begins entering catatonic states, one of which allows another carnie to rob him. Mr. Tipps taunts Seven by revealing he and Eve can fix the rot, which Tipps also suffers from now, but Eve cannot speak and Tipps would rather be in Hell than save them.

The family finally becomes headliners at the Buffalo Horror Show but, prior to the performance, Eve finds her parents suffering backstage from their respective rot. Still haunted by memories of her murdered brother and the tragedy that followed, Maggie asks Eve to finally cut her and Seven loose. Instead, Eve cuts off their rotted body parts and turns the two of them into one person by putting Maggie's head onto Seven's body. Eve and Maggie/Seven then take the stage for a triumphant show.

---

Review:

To the uninitiated or underprepared, watching "Where the Devil Roams" must be either a disorienting or possibly disappointing experience for anyone whose first exposure to the films of the Adams Family comes from catching this movie on Tubi. The free streaming service cycles through a fair number of popular, albeit older, genre titles such as "Child's Play," "It," "The Lost Boys," and "Bram Stoker's Dracula." They put out some original features like this one too, but the breadth of their content comes from a trough of low-budget filler and DTV cheapies that might make someone believe the B in B-movie stands for "Bad." Not even close to being a top-flight destination for horror hits, Tubi is where people go for a quick fix of killer goblins, grindhouse gore, or retro midnighters from the 1980s when they don't know what else to watch.

Tubi definitely isn't where you'd expect to find too many contemplative, slow-burn dramas heavy on metaphorical subtext and Biblical ruminations. Not alongside "Puppet Master 5" or "Amityville Backpack" at least. So I suspect there may be more than a few Tubi viewers out there liable to take a chance on "Where the Devil Roams" only to be caught completely off guard by the movie's experimental flair and arthouse aesthetic.

"Where the Devil Roams" takes place on a rural carnival circuit in 1935. The year makes the movie a period piece, which at first feels anathema to the extremely crisp, sharp-focused digital sheen belying a setting from another century. In typical Adams Family fashion, however, the filmmakers turn this anachronistic battle into a full-blown war by adding a metal soundtrack courtesy of H6llb6nd6r, the rock band fronted by the family. Always marching to the beat of their own drum figuratively as well as now literally, the Adams Family bucks convention so you get the sense "Where the Devil Roams" really takes place in a slightly sideways slice of reality, almost like a filmed theatrical play where sets on stages dotted by overexaggerating dancers never read as fully real, either.

The traveling sideshow backdrop also befits the Adams Family's dynamic. Loyal to their Catskill Mountain roots, the foursome's close-knitted collaborations do more than tie them together tightly. They keep their creativity insulated from outside influences, reinforcing their collective as a unique unit of artistic entertainers who often go underappreciated by mainstream audiences that aren't necessarily tuned to their distinctly dark vibe.

But those mainstream moviegoers are likely to have a harder time getting into this movie than previous features "The Deeper You Dig" (review here) or "Hellbender" (review here) because "Where the Devil Roams" represents the Adams Family's most difficult-to-dissect effort yet. The prologue feature a legless, tattooed man in a suit reading a poetic passage about the fallen angel Abaddon to an old-time audience pulled from a public domain film. Further black-and-white footage shows up intermittently, with characters suddenly flickering in the light of a dying projector bulb. Other flourishes include performance art-type dance numbers where mute teen Eve finds her voice through song, violent WWI flashbacks for her PTSD-afflicted father Seven, and equally haunting memories of childhood murder for her mother Maggie.

A tangible narrative doesn't crystallize until about 30 minutes into the runtime. By then, hazy threads about the family members killing crooked bankers and other elitists who cross them, a magician with an occult item capable of reattaching severed body parts, and the ongoing traumas plaguing everyone involved take shape as a thematic fable about rot, renewal, and dealing with the devil.

The reason why I waited so long to finally screen "Where the Devil Roams" is because frankly, the Adams Family intimidates me. In all my years of watching horror movies as a fan and then covering them as a critic, I haven't come across any other DIY filmmakers at the homegrown level who are consistently as inventive, fearless, and introspective as Toby Poser, John Adams, and their daughters Zelda and Lulu. I'm in awe of their talents, although I'm also afraid of a day possibly coming when their raw lightning finally leaks out of its bottle.

That day hasn't come yet, although I confess I've watched "Where the Devil Roams" twice and I'm still not sure what or how much effect it had on me, or if I ever even penetrated half of what it has to say underneath its zig-zagging style. I won't pretend to understand all of the symbolism behind sudden shifts in color palettes, scenes of clowns musing around campfires, or jump-cut zoom into the moon. Yet as I do with David Lynch, I trust that the Adams Family knows exactly what they're doing and why, even if I don't.

I do know that "Where the Devil Roams" is too esoteric for my tastes, and probably for Tubi's general population as well, but my greater takeaway is that the Adams Family hasn't compromised their auteur approach to indie filmmaking in the genre space, and that's a good thing. Bizarre, beautiful, and bold, their weird work still paves a peerless path. Even an arguable hiccup like "Where the Devil Roams" is not nearly enough to deter me, and certainly not them, from eagerly anticipating the next stop on their one-of-a-kind road.

Review Score: 60

---