The Adam-Poser family’s latest horror, Mother of Flies, is centered around the strange connection between a young girl with a terminal illness, Mickey, and a witch who dwells in the woods, Solveig. Through its poetic narration, the film delves into the connection between life and death, light and dark, and day and night—that one cannot exist without the other. Therefore, the murky idea that one is better/holier than the other is put to the test. Solveig had communicated with Mickey through a dream, and the young girl was convinced that the witch/healer was her only ray of hope. Mickey was a cancer survivor, and as soon as she thought the worst was over, she learned that an inoperable tumor had started to grow in her abdomen. Doctors predicted she only had six months, but Mickey refused to give up without a fight. She wasn’t afraid of death, but she wanted to experience life to its fullest. When Mickey embarks on a journey to Solveig’s house, she has no idea what the next three days of her life will look like. But given her circumstances, she wants to believe that in three days, she will be healed. Her father, Jake, joins her, although he refuses to believe that magic can cure his child.
Spoiler Alert
Who was Solveig?
Solveig had an air of mystery about her; she spoke in rhythm and riddles and was quite secretive of her healing method. Mickey had complete faith in her, although she barely knew the woman, and they’d only communicated through dreams. There was something about Solveig that convinced Mickey that she could heal her. Perhaps it was Mickey’s desperation—her blind faith in the witch’s healing power made her feel hopeful, and without it she would have nothing left to do but count down her final days. She was ready to do whatever Solveig asked of her, even though her father constantly reminded her that it was all too dubious. From micro-dosing Jake with a poisonous herb that left him sick, to cracking open a snake’s egg on Mickey’s abdomen, let’s just say Solveig’s method wasn’t really mainstream. She is like a character straight out of classic literature. She dwelled in the woods, listened closely to the sound of the trees, occasionally flew through the sky, never consumed any food, and always had flies buzzing all around her almost as if she was rotten flesh. Jake thought she was peculiar, but Mickey was more concerned about getting better than worrying about how weird her healer was.
Mother of Flies’ ending revealed that Solveig was actually dead, and Mickey and Jake had been communicating with her spirit all this time! The recurring image of a dead woman (at various stages of decomposition) foreshadowed this possibility. On the third day of the ritual, Solveig hypnotized Mickey and transferred a snake that she’d gulped down into Mickey’s mouth. The young girl felt extremely uncomfortable as soon as she regained consciousness. Jake noticed that his daughter wasn’t feeling well, and he advised that they leave the house immediately. Mickey was disappointed in her father; he’d been anything but supportive of her, and she wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to come along with her in the first place. He didn’t think that she could be cured, and his distrust in the process left Mickey frustrated. She asked her father to leave, and Jake obliged. It wasn’t an easy decision for him to leave his daughter behind, but he figured he had to give Mickey the space to make her own choices. He decided to stay at a nearby motel, and when he mentioned to the receptionist that his daughter was consulting a healer and asked her about Solveig, the receptionist mentioned that the witch was a necromancer.
Solveig had died a couple of hundred years ago, but she’d apparently tricked Death and roamed the Earth (you don’t say!). Now this, of course, was enough reason for Jake to rush back to the house covered in roots and mosses. Meanwhile, Mickey’s health only got worse; she started to hallucinate and imagined a woman covered in blood calling for help. She realized that maybe asking her father to leave hadn’t been a wise decision, considering how creepy the place was. She decided to leave the house and ended up walking into the woods. But can you ever escape a dead witch? Solveig figured that Mickey had gotten cold feet, and she ended up knocking her out and dragging her back to the spot that, according to the receptionist, was her grave. The locals had been piling stones on her grave for hundreds of years, because they feared that the witch might one day come back from the dead. By the time Mickey regained consciousness, she saw Solveig cut open her abdomen, and she experienced excruciating pain.
Why did Solveig choose Mickey?
Mickey had mentioned that she’d gone through a hysterectomy to combat cancer, and Solveig added that she was ‘barren,’ but she believed that even though she was ‘fruitless,’ she was ‘a tree, no less.’ Throughout the film, we witness glimpses of Solveig’s past, and later, when the receptionist describes the horror that the witch was subjected to, everything adds up. Long ago, a young pregnant woman was brought to Solveig, and the locals had begged her to save the girl. Since the infant was stillborn, Solveig had made a pact: she would get to keep the dead child in exchange for saving the life of the young mother. The locals had agreed to the pact, but unfortunately they didn’t stick to it. After the child was buried, Solveig dug it out of the grave and held it close to her heart. She brought the child back to life, and the sounds of its cry echoed through the woods.
The villagers were petrified by the witches’ power, and they ultimately separated the baby from Solveig and burned it alive. Although Solveig was considered evil, the ruthlessness demonstrated by the villagers underlines that maybe the devil always lurks in common sight. Just like most witches who were burned, stoned, or executed because their practices didn’t align with the common belief system, Solveig too was a victim. Her extraordinary power to bring the dead back to life was seen as a threat, an abnormality that needed to be stopped. The power she possessed was quite ‘godly,’ but then again, a woman like her who lived in the woods and practiced witchcraft didn’t ‘deserve’ to be put on a pedestal; her voice needed to be suppressed, and her story of compassion and motherly affection had to be reduced to a sort of horror zombie tale. Solveig watched the merciless demons burn her child as she screamed in agony. They buried her alive, and for centuries they kept piling stones on her grave, afraid that she might defy all odds and come back to haunt them. Solveig didn’t come to life in mortal form, but her spirit, which craved to hold her infant close to her heart once again, continued to roam the earth, hoping to one day be reunited with her baby. She felt a connection with Mickey, and although she was barren, she believed that what was harmful for her could actually bring back the joy she’d been searching for all these years. Mickey had described her tumor as being the size of an ‘apple.’ Biblically, her tumor symbolized the forbidden fruit, and Solveig’s temptation to hold it in her hands aptly fits the description. The symbolism of the serpent (remember the snake that Solveig had transferred to Mickey) further emphasizes the biblical reference. The serpent’s role was to guide Solveig to the forbidden fruit, and when the time was right, she slit open Mickey’s abdomen and pulled out the tumor.
Did Solveig cure the young girl?
The apple can also be interpreted as a symbol of redemption, since Solveig chose to mold something that was deadly into a beautiful creation. Considering the power that she possessed, maybe she could’ve targeted a pregnant woman and taken away her infant to satisfy her motherly instinct. But instead, she chose Mickey, who wanted to get rid of the tumor, and what was deadly to her was an opportunity for Solveig. She transformed the toxic mass of tissue into a newborn, and she held her creation close to her heart. For centuries, she’d been waiting to feel the joy of motherhood again, and through Mickey, she experienced the same emotions. Solveig screamed at the pile of stones; they’d tried to separate her from her child, and her reuniting with her infant was her telling them ‘nobody could stop a mother.’
Mother of Flies’ ending suggests that after holding her child, Solveig’s soul was finally ready to rest. By the time Jake returned to Solveig’s grave, Mickey was lying there unconscious. Jake managed to wake her up, and she was surprised to see that her abdomen was completely healed. There was no sign of the cut, yet the blood suggested that she hadn’t dreamt any of it; the witch had taken out her tumor and molded an infant out of it. In the end, Mickey went through medical tests that confirmed that the tumor was gone and she was perfectly healthy.
Why did Jake and Mickey dig up Solveig’s grave?
Jake and Mickey dug up Solveig’s grave because they wanted to make sure that whatever they’d experienced was real and not an elaborate hallucinatory episode. They removed the pile of stones and dug deep to finally find the skeletal remains of a mother holding her infant. This further confirms that the quasi-birthing episode wasn’t Mickey’s imagination. Solveig had magically given life to the tumor that was killing Mickey from the inside and satisfied her desire of reuniting with her baby. Solveig’s ability to communicate with Death didn’t bring destruction; it rather brought life. Mickey was healed, and she now had the chance to experience life to the fullest, as she’d always intended. When her doctor suggested she go through more tests, she refused, because she didn’t care about satisfying the scientific community anymore. She wasn’t ready to be treated like a guinea pig. The first round of tests proved that she was healed, and most importantly, she knew that she was fine, and she didn’t care about the results anymore. Being with Solveig had taught her the importance of believing, and she wanted to hold onto it.
