A Mother’s Embrace, on Screambox

Firefighting must be incredibly hard work in Rio. Presumably, favelas are highly combustible. Plus, it just gets hot there in general (trust me on that one). However, Ana and her team of firefighters would have been better of fighting a favela fire on the hottest day of the year, then responding to a call to this decrepit nursing home during a historic deluge. The creaking old building is not structurally sound, but something worse lurks underneath in Cristian Ponce’s A Mother’s Embrace, which premieres today on Screambox.

The final days of Ana’s mother were a little weird—and sinister. There was an impulsive trip to carnival funhouse. She then woke up as flames engulfed their apartment. She survived, but her mother did not—or so she always assumed. Lately, she has been seeing visions of her mother at inopportune times, including during a fire call. This will be her fist night back in thee field. She should have waited one more day.

It is not exactly clear whom, but someone called in a complaint claiming an unregulated old folks’ home was on the verge of collapse. Frankly, the callr was not exaggerating by much, but none of the residents seems to care. In fact, they are downright hostile. They seem to be a cult in thrall to the slithery, vaguely Lovecraftian beneath the house, or something like that.

Frankly, it is not entirely clear what Ponce and co-screenwriters Gabriella Capella and Andre Pereira (who co-wrote The Trace We Leave Behind) think is going on during the course of the film. Is Ana’s mother part of the cult, or not? Just what kind of thing is the tentacle creature? Viewers will be hard pressed to explain, even after watching.  Yet, it is all undeniably creepy. As luck would have it, A Mother’s Embrace was filmed during a real-life gale, so a lot of the wind and precipitation were legit and “free,” courtesy of mother nature.

Indeed, old H.P. would definitely dig the atmosphere of dread. The squirrely-acting mortals are also pretty chilling. Likewise, Val Perre and Reynaldo Machado show-off some fierce screen-presences as Ana’s teammates, Dias and Roque. However, Globo telenovela star Marjorie Estiano is perfectly fine as Ana, but it is not her best genre work (that would probably be the werewolf film, Good Manners).

This is an odd and sometimes confusing film, but it isn’t bad. Seriously, we do not typically turn to horror for cohesive logic or scrupulous realism. Mood and tension are much more important, which this film has covered. Recommended for fans of Brazilian Lovecraftian horror, A Mother’s Embrace starts streaming today (9/16) on Screambox.