Actress and filmmaker Toby Poser:
To start, please introduce yourself:
Hey, I’m Toby Poser. Thanks for including me in this celebration of Women in Horror Month! I make films with my family – we’re collectively known as The Adams Family – and three of us are women. So shout-out to my daughters, Lulu and Zelda. Some of our features are The Deeper You Dig, Hellbender, Where the Devil Roams, Hell Hole, and the upcoming Mother of Flies. We also have a band called H6LLB6ND6R.
What is horror to you, what makes a work of art one in the horror genre?
Horror is the great manipulator. It corrupts or spotlights reality. It fiddles with what we know and twists it to uncomfortable, new norms, or it forces us to confront truths we may not want to see, forcing us to open eyes – or bang them shut. Horror also makes a god of un-reality, of whatever doesn’t make sense. It is a playground for all our fears – those on the surface and subliminal, personal. Horror’s circuitry is directly connected to our heart, its current pumped and personified by our pulse. I love that.
For me, what makes a work of art in the horror genre is risk. How has a story subverted what I thought I knew; how has it gone to original and daring lengths to challenge my perceptions – and even more so, how has it challenged me to both love and hate a character? I love when a film uses horror as a clever device to reveal something about our world that is even more terrifying than the film itself.
What made you want to work in horror?
I love the safe playing field to explore through horror, in the way that nightmares are crucial templates to draft all our human, horrible possibilities in waking life – but we can wake up and go on living, perhaps having learned something essential. Also, horror is just FUN. Watching horror and making horror. Both fun. I honestly feel like horror through art is incredibly healthy. I feel lucky to say that I’m a pretty happy human, and conjuring horrific stories and working with fake blood and devising brutal fictional scenarios offers welcome balance in my happy life. Fortunately, ny partner and kids feel the same way. We find a lot of glee in thinking very dark thoughts – and laugh a lot while doing so.
Where do you get your inspiration?
There is usually an autobiographical current flowing through our films, so lots of familial issues or experiences inform our narratives. We are also very influenced by Nature. We live in the woods, and Nature is so generous when it comes to her brutality and her beauty. Thematically, we are always looking to the wilderness – floral and faunal – for cues.
What would you like your legacy to be in the genre (or elsewhere)?
I’d like for my daughters and me to be recognized as members of a vast pool of creative women who made independent horror movies on their own terms, in cool, moving, and original ways.
What is Women in Horror Month to you and why is it still important this many years later?
The horror family is big and bodacious, and this month we acknowledge and celebrate all the hard working, imaginative, visionary, powerful women out there making killer films, books, mags, art, music, special effects, songs they howl at the moon and spells written in blood and buried in the dirt… all of it. It’s important to continue and to escalate awareness of women’s work in horror, because we are riding on each others’ tailwinds. Acknowledgement (often overdue) of former work by women honors not only them but all of us as we hustle and generate art and claim our place in all creative spaces.
Who are some of the Women in Horror who you look up to and who do you want to bring attention to in your field or others?
There are so many filmmakers and writers and artists I admire and learn from, but I’d like to spew some love to the women who love horror and support in other ways. I’m talking about the young women I’ve met at cons who’ve painted their own stark images on tees and said hello and asked questions about making their first film; the women who volunteer at film fests and make everything fun and smooth; the women (hello, Cinema Crazed) who keep the horror fires burning by writing about the medium and by asking all the good questions; the women podcasters; the women whose love for the genre is contagious, sharing their thoughts and opening their hearts on social media and whose generous confidence and enthusiasm in our work injects the same in our sometimes-doubtful hearts. I learn from them all – they’re who we make movies for, and they remind us to keep chasing the hard work and the hard fun.
What are you currently working on that you can tell us about?
Mother of Flies is our new feature. It’s about a dying young woman who seeks the help of a witchdoctor in the woods – a woman with a “thorny” past.
Where can readers keep up with you?
www.wonderWheelProductions.com
Instagram: @adams.family.films
BlueSky: @AdamsFamFilms.bsky.social
