BeyondFest 2024 Review: A MOTHER'S EMBRACE, Brazilian Horror Doesn't Capitalize on Fear Building

A young firefighter, Ana, and her team take a call to an old people's home that is at risk of collapsing during the worst storm to hit Rio de Janeiro in thirty years. However, everyone is strangely reluctant to leave - insistent that everything will be fine - and if the team does not act fast enough the outcome could be tragic. As they try their best to evacuate the home, Ana finds that something sinister is lurking beneath the floorboards and the residents are not as innocent as they first seemed. 

 

History of the Occult's Christian Ponce is back with a new horror flick, A Mother’s Embrace, set in Rio de Janeiro during the Summer of 1996. They start out this new flick with title sequence built around devastating and deadly floods that swamped the Brazilian city in the Summer of 1966. Can confirm that there are reallife reports of heavy flooding happening in the city during both years. Thirty years is a good amount of time between apocalyptic weather and strange shenanigans in a retirement home, don’t you think? 

 

We move into the prologue which shows a fateful decision made by Ana’s mother. What happens that day scars Ana for life, so much so that we’re told that it effects her ability to do her job. When we join Ana in ‘96 she’s coming back on duty after a forced leave. What it doesn’t do is explain to us why mom did what she did. Why does the milk taste funny, Ana’s mom? 

 

Typically, when you revisit the backstory later in any film, which this one does more than once, you will get an answer. All we get here are glimpses of her mother here and there, acting only as a haunting apparition. Rather than explain why her mom did what she did all we’re going to get out of Ponce and their co-writers, André Pereira and Gabriela Capello, is that this is the life changing event from which she decides she wants to be a firefighter. Fair enough. 

 

So Ana rejoins the rest of the team, her senior Diaz, her co-worker Roque and their driver, Mourão. We can all agree that anyone other than Ana is potentially fodder for whatever is going on in that home. This isn’t a spoiler, it’s Horror 101. There are varying degrees by which they meet their demise and the one that sticks around the longest is revealed to have a deeper connection to Ana. It’s meant to be an emotional wallop in the moment, and it works for the most part. 

 

So it’s understandable that we spend more time with them before they get dragged away to meet their own fate. The other two simply go missing - one rather unceremoniously - which is not enough to boost the looming threat that we’re supposed to be feeling by now. One will reappear for some of that good old, ‘something is wrong with him’ trope action. The other? Well it’s a shitty way to go no matte who you are. There were hints that someone on the team may have liked Ana more than just a coworker. That could have been played up for some real empathy points from the audience. Alas, no. 

 

What kind of horror flick we having here will be very evident from the first accident scene. We’re not giving away anything here but astute horror watchers will have figured it out once they see that first reveal during the first accident scene Ana attends to. So we wait until the end for no big surprise. A once in a generation storm floods the city, so lots of things can freely go where they couldn’t before. The strange residents of a dilapidated nursing home refuse to leave under any conditions. More strange people (we see you, nuestro padre del terror, Pablo Guisa Koestinger) show up with their elderly parents during the peak of the storm, some brazenly intent on entering the home to the point of harming themselves breaking through the front door. 

 

It’s all meant to stir up fear and emotion in the viewer yet somehow it won’t. The overall issue is that the story does not present enough of a threat to Ana and her team. Even through its omniscience the audience is missing key triggers to make us anxious about the inevitable outcome. Ana doesn’t need to know everything that is happening to everyone but we do in order for us to be scared for her. 

 

Even when some of the team casually disappear then reappear later we don’t know what happened to them so we don’t feel scared for Ana. Oddly enough we feel more fear for Lia, the daughter of the home’s caretaker Ulisses, because her father is portrayed as a direct threat to her midway through the film. They are, another questionable parental figure. 

 

Well all is said and done we find out what Ponce and company have been meaning to do by the end of their story. They have aimed to show that Ana has learned how to live with all this pain she harbors inside herself. As they limp away from the home they’re asked if it hurts, meaning her foot. She admits that it does, but we also know that what she’s really done is accept the pain from that fateful night with her mother and she can go on living. Her co-worker can’t, but again, Horror 101. Cue end credits.  

 

Giving ourselves a bit more time than usual to mull over this movie we cannot help but think that the filmmakers and writers painted themselves into a corner; where they hoped that the reveal at the end is the most satisfying part. Did they hold back on the buildup so as to not take away from the moment? Feels like it.

 

You have a generational storm coming in and swamping the city, which allows an unsavory element access it only gets once every thirty years. Then, as more people continue show up at the home, presented as they are and desperate to get in, we’ve already begun to put the pieces together. From that very first glimpse of the ‘something’ at the first car crash horror fans have already anticipated what it is. So, we already have an idea where we’re going, now we’re simply along for the ride. Does that make the story anticlimactic? That depends on the viewer. 

 

Figuring out where we’re headed and looking for thrills along the way, when we don’t get them we don’t feel scared for Ana. That’s missing when it comes to Ana, the central character in this story, we’re not worried about her because we haven’t been given cause to be. When we don’t know what’s happened to her friends and coworkers we don’t fear that the same is going to happen to her. It creates a perceived imbalance between thrills and chills along to the big scary bit at the end. That’s a problem.