Haunting comes in many forms. Brazilian horror A Mother’s Embrace weaves together a variety of kinds with effortless style and subtlety. The film largely takes place during a storm in 1996, the worst Rio de Janeiro had suffered for twenty-five years. The collective trauma of disaster infuses the script, vibrates in lingering shots of the oncoming storm, and the myriad ways torrential rain can devastate.
Although the importance of the storm to the story and its setting can’t be diminished, it’s the opening seventies-set sequence and the traumatic childhood event it depicts that provides the film its emotional thrust. The sequence has an ambiguity and, as it’s increasingly revisited throughout the film, it shifts and morphs. Trauma as haunting.
After surviving a fire set by her mother as a child, Ana (a powerful performance from Marjorie Estiano) joins the fire service. But she’s bumped down to desk duty after suffering a panic attack when confronted with a potent trigger of her childhood experience. Fighting to return, and with a clear psych evaluation, she’s back on the force in time for a call out to a supposedly collapsing care home. She arrives to find the home in a worse state of degradation, the residents unspeaking, static and dead-eyed, all except the old woman who owns the house and the younger man who claims to be the manager. It might not be collapsing, but it’s violating a litany of health and safety laws, and poses an increasing risk to life with the worsening rain and rising floods. Evacuation is the only option, but the residents — and what lurks beneath — have other plans.
Christian Ponce, the Argentinian director who made a name for himself in the Latin horror scene with 2020’s History of the Occult, demonstrates his clear evolution directing the script he co-wrote with Gabriela Capello and André Pereira. It’s a slow-burn experience, taking time to set tone and establish Ana’s character. Here it’s closer to the European horror tradition in pacing and plotting, evoking 2007’s Orphanage, albeit with the elderly. Suspense and atmosphere are steadily built, the horror creeping like a water stain. A feat accomplished as much by direction as an intensification of music and Cronenbergian sound.
But the US horror cannon hasn’t been shunned — Ponce himself hails early John Carpenter as one of the film’s biggest inspirations. The palpable, slow creep of dread present in Halloween and The Thing can also be felt here as the house traps the firefighters. There’s even a Carpenter Easter egg for the eagle-eyed.
Visually, however, the film conjures something different. It’s not just set in 1996, it has the look and feel of a turn-of-the-century dark thriller, bringing to mind Seven and Red Dragon. But where those films deal with strictly human monsters, there’s a real monstrosity at the heart of A Mother’s Embrace, all creeping tendrils and teeth. A monster both cosmic and chthonic. The flat, muted colour palette serves to make the close-ups of fire and kaleidoscopic childhood memories all the more hallucinogenic and arresting. This contrast also elevates the climax, with its bright-orange glow and haunting imagery, to levels of the sublime.
A Mother’s Embrace deftly visualises a smart script that’s filled with subtlety, so you can forgive the occasionally on-the-nose visual metaphor. What lingers after watching is the persistent insidious influence of childhood trauma when unresolved in adults. It’s a theme that’s become increasingly prevalent in modern horror, but is explored here with nuance and depth. In ninety minutes, we see Ana learn to live with pain, accept it not only as fundamentally human, but as part of the healing process, and overcoming the trauma and self-parenting that follows parental abuse.
Based on this entry alone, Latin horror is alive, well, and in very safe hands.
DISTRIBUTOR
Blue Finch
DIRECTOR
Cristian Ponce
SCREENPLAY
Cristian Ponce
Gabriela Capello
André Pereira
CAST
Marjorie Estiano
Chandelly Braz
Javier Drolas
DIGITAL
10 November 2025
