The Adams family — John, Tobey Poser, Zelda and Lulu — isn’t your typical suburban clan. They don’t just watch horror movies. They live them, breathing life into a DIY empire of low-budget, high-splatter independent horror. In this 80-minute deep dive, directors Carlye Rubin and Katie Green pull back the curtain on a family where the dinner-table talk is just as likely to be about practical effects and gore gags as about day-to-day life.

At its heart, Blood and Guts explores the blurring of boundaries, both professional and personal. We follow the Adams family as they navigate the relentless grind of indie filmmaking. Their living room is a practical effects workshop, their backyard a soundstage, and their relationships are forged in buckets of fake blood.

The film captures the chaotic beauty of their creative process, showing that while they might be covered in synthetic gore and tossing profanity around like confetti, they are subject to the same universal pressures as any other family. As the industry changes and its internal dynamics shift, the Adams have to figure out how to keep their unique brand of cinematic terror and their family unit intact.

Much like the legendary family-run operations of exploitation history (think of the communal, all-hands-on-deck nature of early regional horror sets), Blood and Guts suggests that when your work is your life, you never really clock out. And while many documentaries focus on the how-to of filmmaking, this leans heavily into the“why, painting a portrait of a family that has embraced the fringes of cinema not just as a career, but as a way of being together.

I’d recommend watching any of their films, including Hellbender, The Deeper You Dig and Where the Devil Roams. Then come back, watch this and see how much work goes into their art.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.