★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Cristian Ponce
Director Cristian Ponce’s terrific Brazilian chiller weaves an eerie nursing home filled with mysterious residents, something weird winding through water, and trauma from childhood into a suspenseful, mysterious work with a riveting third act.
Official synopsis: A twisted & original new Brazilian horror from Cristian Ponce. In 1996 a young firefighter and her team were called to help an old people’s home that is at risk of flooding during the worst storm to ever hit Rio de Janeiro. As they try their best to evacuate the elderly, the firefighter soon finds something sinister lurking beneath the surface, and the residents are not as innocent as they first seem. Entangled in their web, she must fight through her own traumatic past to escape.
Using ambiguity, foreshadowing, and mystery building to an excellent extent and combining those elements with an emotional impact that constructs true investment in its protagonist, director Cristian Ponce’s A Mother’s Embrace (Brazil, 2024) is a superb horror outing.
We meet firefighter Ana (Marjorie Estiano) as a child when early hints are given that her mother means harm toward her, and when we see the pair experience a devastating home fire. Flashbacks to this and other events in Ana’s childhood are interspersed with the present-day story concerning Ana being reinstated to active duty after freezing up during a rescue attempt on the same day as her mother’s death. Ana and her firefighter teammates — Dias (Val Perré), Roque (Reynaldo Machado), and Mourão (Rafael Canedo) — are called to a dilapidated nursing home during a storm that caused flooding and major damage in Rio de Janeiro in January 1996. None of the staff members — including elderly owner Drica (Ângelo Rebelo) and manager Ulisses (Javier Drolas) — nor the seemingly silent residents requested help, though, and they make it clear that they do not wish to be evacuated, except for a frightened young girl named Lia (Maria Volpe). Add to the increasingly bizarre behavior of the staff and residents the fact that viewers were earlier shown something creepy gliding in the water, and we have a nice setup for a terror tale.
Ponce, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Gabriela Capello and André Pereira, builds tension expertly, giving viewers clues early on as to what might be afoot while leading things into a spectacular and quite unexpected third act. Estiano gives a riveting lead performance as Ana, a woman suffering psychological and emotional damage from a troubled past but who is also strong and level-headed at times of grave danger. Ana’s character arc is superb. Estiano is aided by an excellent supporting cast.
I don’t want to give away any of the film’s fright-fare highlights or surprises. Suffice it to say that going in as cold as possible to Ponce’s latest chiller will reap great rewards. A Mother’s Embrace is certain to make my list of 10 best horror films of this year.
Review by Joseph Perry
A Mother’s Embrace screened as part of Beyond Fest, which ran September 25–October 9, 2024 in Los Angeles. For more information, visit https://beyondfest.com/.