A MOTHER’S EMBRACE (aka ABRACO DE MAE, 2024)

Streaming on Screambox!
Directed by Cristian Ponce.
Written by Cristian Ponce, Gabriela Capello, André Pereira.
Check out the trailer here!!

A MOTHER’S EMBRACE begins with a mother taking her daughter to a carnival. The little girl insists to go into a funhouse, which turns out to be a maze based on the insides of the female body. The maze ends with a room made to look like a womb which frightens the young girl and the mother takes the frightened girl out and carries her home. This highly symbolic opener sets the stage to look at the complex relationship between mother and daughter. The film then scuttles forward to 25 years later with a record-breaking downpour flooding the small Brazilian town and a team of firefighters, including the grown up girl from the intro, Ana (Marjorie Estiano), arriving at a nursing home in need of inspection due to the rising flood waters. They are greeted by a strange wheelchair bound woman, who insists that the elderly tenants in the building are fine and must not move in the storm. But the firefighters insist and begin inspecting the dark home. Soon they find that the rising waters are the least of the dangers festering within the building’s walls and floors.

From Christian Ponce, who was last seen helming the surprise shocker HISTORY OF THE OCCULT, comes a film literally dripping with atmosphere. This is a film that owes much to the absolutely treacherous setting the action takes place in. Torrential rain and thunderstorms often set a dire mood, but in A MOTHER’S EMBRACE, it is a menacing character all its own, challenging Ana and the firefighters at every turn. Everything is wet or damp or dripping. This must have been one hell of a shoot, requiring much of the cast to be soaking wet for most of the movie as the water begins to seep into the home and tear it apart. But much like [REC], a film A MOTHER’S EMBRACE very much reminds me of, the dark, maze-like corridors add a whole ‘notha level of dire circumstance for our heroes, as the building literally seems to swallow these firefighters up and separates them from one another and the outside world. The fact that this takes place within a nursing home is already creepy, but knock out the lights, spring a leak from the walls, and have the elderly pittering around in the dark like cockroaches and this is a dangerous setting that makes the viewer feel trapped and helpless.

The weirdness doesn’t stop there. With the arrival of a trio of guests, it seems there is something very culty going on and while Ana is trying to go about her business evacuating the decrepit building, her fellow firefighters are disappearing, and more people keep showing up. The fact that, no matter how much Ana orders and eventually pleads with the occupants to gather their things and leave, no one seems to listen and nothing seems able to get in the way of whatever these weirdos have planned. The results are Lovecraftian as tentacles slither through the cracks and a giant beast seems to be materializing in the flooded basement. Yeah, this is definitely a unique one.

The title A MOTHER’S EMBRACE is an odd one. It doesn’t necessarily strike fear in the heart. Maybe it translates to something more sinister. But it does make sense as Ana herself finds a young girl in the building and like Ripley and Newt, must battle the monsters and escape this treacherous place before it all falls apart. The climax becomes a race against time as child becomes mother in order to save the day.

Do they make it? Not telling. But for the unpredictable antagonists, the murky tentacle monster, and the setting where danger creeps at you from every direction, A MOTHER’S EMBRACE is something truly unique from a visionary director worth following,