By RICHELLE CHARKOT
Starring Marjorie Estiano, Pablo Guisa Koestinger and Javier Drolas
Directed by Cristian Ponce
Written by Cristian Ponce, André Pereira and Mariana Muniz
It is often said that horror trends follow the universal anxieties of their time, crystallizing the essence of what people find scary in any given era. This has created some instant classics in the recent past, but as we emerge from COVID into sustained political unrest and economic turmoil, another horror movie about trauma seems quite tired when what’s scariest now is so much larger in scale than it used to be. For this reason, when A MOTHER’S EMBRACE opens with a scene in which we learn of a firefighter’s painful past, confidence in the film starts to waver. However, thanks to its strong tone and eldritch setting, A MOTHER’S EMBRACE is worth checking out.
In the late ’90s, a horrible storm devastates Rio de Janeiro. A firefighter named Ana (Marjorie Estiano) returns from leave after freezing on the job due to a traumatic flashback in which she remembers nearly dying in a fire as a child. She is eager and ready to return to the line of duty, despite some nerves after a successful rescue at a dilapidated retirement home in the middle of nowhere. It is suspected that the residents are living in unsafe conditions, made especially dire during the storm. Ana’s team is called to assess and potentially remove the occupants. Upon arrival, it’s clear that evacuation is imminent, but soon, Ana finds herself in the belly of the beast, fighting against forces that threaten to engulf her.
A MOTHER’S EMBRACE is a well-acted piece of cosmic horror that uses its location as a character in itself. The retirement home is dingy to say the least – dark, cold, wet and rotting. There is a real sense that Ana and her team have been displaced in time and locked in an underworld that does not exist in the universe they awoke in. Some plot points start to feel a little murky when something cult-like is afoot, but in a world where little makes sense, it does seem kind of easy to wave away as inconsequential. Still, there is a strong atmosphere that makes for an agreeably scary and hypnotic watch, even if the plot doesn’t necessarily stick with viewers beyond its run time.
