Blood and Guts (2025) Review

If you’re an attendee of horror film festivals, you’re likely to have seen a movie made by The Adams Family. Chances are you’ll have seen more than one, as this prolific gang of indie creatives always seems to have a project in the works. In this blurring of real life and reel life, the Adamses look to complete their latest movie before youngest daughter Zelda heads to college and are faced with how that may redefine their future roles both as filmmakers and a family unit.

Full disclosure here if you’re not already aware: I love the movies of The Adams Family. Ever since 2019’s The Deeper You Dig I’ve been hooked and each new movie of theirs brings bigger creative swings and a continuing, exciting evolution of the collective as artists. Directors Tina Grapenthin, Katie Green and Caryle Rubin capture all of those collaborative, on set aspects but also paint a candid picture of family life, informed further by means of archive footage which provides a fascinating, detailed background and real, emotional heft.

Set around the making of 2023’s Where The Devil Roams, there’s an abundance of fun insights into the upstate New York playground of this indie production powerhouse which has gone from the locals viewing the Adams folks as the odd lot who kill people on film to wanting to be cast as the folks killed on film by the odd lot who kill people on film. The beautiful but also desolate and sometimes bleak surroundings are fertile territory for their grounded but fiercely imaginative work, the outside of their home amusingly littered with body parts and skeletons, the freezer containing such items as a crow’s head, supplied to them by an enterprising neighbour who maybe thought it would look good in a movie.

There’s a lot of love out there for these folks and the temptation would have been for Blood And Guts to be relentlessly hagiographic but the honesty with which everything is portrayed comes across strongly. Yes, every one of them is a smart, decent person but they struggle like the rest of us and there’s no shying away from those moments when they may not be at their best but their practicality and honesty at the worst of times will make the viewer wish they had the Adams folks in their corner.

John, in particular, proves a fascinating character, breaking down on camera when he recalls his own, dreadful battle with cancer at a point in his life when he should have been conquering the world. Later, as Zelda enjoys her time at Columbia University and John and Toby work on Hell Hole, he finds it extremely difficult when it comes to relinquishing his usual creative control. It doesn’t make him unappealing in the slightest, it makes him even more human.

Both sides of the initial meet cute between John and Toby is related in a sweet aside and for anyone who’s into American daytime soaps you’ll get an unexpected fix of that here too, showing Toby’s work as one of the more entertainingly villainous folks in the long-running Guiding Light. This section also serves as a reminder as to how brutal the industry can be as Toby was fired from the show when she became pregnant but then became the main breadwinner due to her talent for voiceover work.

The piece often harks back to 2013’s Rumblestrips, an early movie from the clan which reflected their nomadic existence and could have been a calling card for an alternative career trajectory but things worked out differently with the realisation that horror was their calling. Back then, Toby was reluctant to kill their kids on screen. Now, maybe not so much but it’s always done with love and the rapid fire montage of both Lulu and Zelda biting the dust across various movies shows that obstacle has been overcome and then some.

The distinct personalities of daughters Lulu and Zelda shine through and although Lulu has less screen time due to her globe hopping she still makes a significant impact here. Zelda talks of not really knowing a time when she wasn’t involved in movies and it’s telling as to the unique opportunities presented to her that she mentions the wait to get any kind of filmmaking experience at Columbia.

It may seem that I’ve given far too much away in this review but fear not, I’ve just scratched the surface. This documentary is an immersion into the world of the Adams Family, presented in a way that always feels like you’re along for the ride. Kudos to the documentarians for handling proceedings with such a lightness of touch while still being able to hit hard with unforeseen moments of raw emotion.

The complete lack of ego shown by all of the subjects is endlessly refreshing. Blood And Guts never smacks of certain portrayals of creatives where you can tell they’re falling over themselves to say “Hey, look how normal I am.” These folks are normal, they’re talented, they’re funny, they’re emotional, they’re worth making a movie about. Blood And Guts stands as an engrossing glimpse into the all hands on deck ethos of low budget productions and those special enough to make it all work with such clarity and purpose, while still being incredibly generous and kind. Trust me, long before the end of this, you’ll want them to be your friends.

Movie Rating:

Blood and Guts trailer