Firefighters are called to a flooding old folks' home during a deadly storm, only to find something evil lurking beneath the water.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Cristian Ponce
Starring: Marjorie Estiano, Javier Drolas, Thelmo Fernandes, Pablo Guisa Koestinger
Horror filmmakers are always trying to find ways to justify their protagonists staying put in the sort of situations most of us would immediately run away from (how many times have you found yourself screaming "get the hell outta there!" at the screen during a horror movie?). With A Mother's Embrace, director Cristian Ponce (along with co-writers Gabriela Capello and André Pereira) has found a novel solution in trapping his film's heroine in a confined location during a storm. Ponce's movie is set during a real storm that devastated the city of Rio in 1996, which also allows him to avoid the sort of storytelling inconveniences that would arise if it were set in the later era of cellphones.
A Mother's Embrace opens first in 1973 as a prologue details a failed murder/suicide attempt in which a troubled woman drugs herself and her young daughter Ana before setting their apartment on fire. The pair are rescued by firefighters, and presumably inspired by this intervention, Ana (Marjorie Estiano) joins that noble profession herself as an adult. In 1996 we find Ana has been relegated to working a desk for the past two months after freezing with fear on a call out. The incident occurred on the same day that Ana learned of her long estranged mother's death, and when her superiors learn of this detail they decide she can return to the field.
Ana's return coincides with the arrival of a major storm, which threatens to cause severe flooding. Her unit is called to an old folks' home on the outskirts of the city, but when they arrive the home's owner insists that no such call was made and everything is fine. Seeing the state of the building, Ana and her team insist on inspecting the property and soon find that it is indeed in danger of collapsing. Its foundations are slowly sinking into the earth and rain is pouring in through holes in the ceiling. Despite this, the home's owner and staff refuse to evacuate the residents. Crumbling foundations and uncooperative staff prove the least of Ana's worries. Her co-workers mysteriously disappear one by one; a terrified young girl named Lia begs Ana to get her away from the home; and strange tentacles slither their way around the structure.
A Mother's Embrace has a great setup, and the dilapidated care home makes for an effectively moody horror movie location, offering a variety of threats from collapsing floorboards to more supernatural dangers. But the film never fully exploits its unique setting's potential. A large chunk of the run time leaves us simply following Ana around as she explores the buildings corridors and rooms, and it's not until around the hour mark that things finally ramp up into full-on horror movie terrain.
Even then the movie suffers from a level of obtuseness that will leave viewers frustrated. I'm usually one to appreciate ambiguity and a filmmaker's willingness to let the audience figure things out without being spoon fed, but A Mother's Embrace conceals so much information that it's difficult to engage with its foggy narrative. We guess early on that Ana has been purposely drawn to the home, and by the end we know the reason why. It's everything in between that leaves us scratching our heads. We're never given any reason why Ana has been chosen or indeed how the thing that chose her came to be. All the film offers is the sight of a bunch of old people donning spooky robes, when some background detail is badly needed to keep us up to speed.
As Ana, Estiano has just the right balance of spunkiness and vulnerability for us to believe that she's both a highly competent professional while also being out of her depth in dealing with a supernatural threat. Ironically, A Mother's Embrace is most engaging in its early scenes before it switches into horror mode. Estiano and her co-stars do a convincing job of portraying a tight knit group of pros whose lives depend on each other's capability. Her male colleagues display a mixture of thoughtfulness and condescension towards Ana, claiming they want to keep her safe while likely meaning they worry about their own safety in her company. When Ana's co-workers vanish and she's left on her own, the film become less interesting, and you might find yourself wishing A Mother's Embrace were a more grounded drama about a female firefighter trying to prove her worth rather than the sub-Lovecraftian cosmic horror into which it ultimately morphs. That said, you'll want to stick around for the applause worthy reveal of the purpose of those tentacles.
A Mother's Embrace is on UK/ROI VOD from November 10th.
