A Mother’s Embrace

Director: Christian Ponce
Screenplay: Gabriela Capello, André Pereira, Cristian Ponce
Starring: Marjorie Estiano, Chandelly Braz, Javier Drolas, Reynaldo Machado, Val Perré, Angela Rabelo, Helena Varvaki, Rafael Canedo, Maria Volpe, Mel Nunes
Country: Brazil
Running Time: 91 min
Year: 2025
BBFC Certificate: 15

Two months after freezing on her last job, firefighter Ana (Estiano) returns to work with her crew on a storm-lashed day in Rio de Janeiro, 1996. A call to help a crumbling nursing home takes a turn when no-one there has any knowledge of the call, nor any intention of letting them leave.

If you follow my reviews on here, you’ll probably have picked up that I like to cover shark movies, or films with an aquatic creature or adventure of some kind. The marketing for A Mother’s Embrace insinuated that this film would comply with that description and, whilst it technically does, it takes a long old time to get there and doesn’t spend much of its slim running time diving into my preferred sub-genre. This isn’t a fault of the film, but might go some way to explaining why I was so disappointed with my viewing experience.

This is far from the tentacle-based creature feature I was anticipating, and is far more of an introspective, metaphorical horror movie with survival elements and a situation that has you yelling at the screen for our heroes to just get the heck out of there.

Sometimes horror films will strand characters in locations they should clearly leave, but don’t for the thinnest of reasons, but here there’s an overload of excuses – on top of the fire team trying to evacuate and save everyone at the nursing home, they’re also partially trapped by the ensuing storm, Ana sees visions of her recently passed mother, with whom she shared a traumatic past, various members of the team become disconnected and do not wish to leave their colleagues behind, plus there’s a rogue child scampering around, also potentially in need of saving. So many elements in such a relatively short film spread the narrative a little too thinly, and as such it was hard to connect with the peril.

The location is fantastic and well depicted, surrounded by rain so dense you lose sight of people after four or five paces, and there’s some very creepy imagery (a room full of pale faces and dead eyes, silently watching you struggle in the darkness? Haunting.) but gore fans will likely be dismayed by too many implied deaths or disappearances, without much actually occurring on screen. There’s a satisfying crowbar moment, but little else to offer much closure.

A Mother’s Embrace is on UK and Ireland digital platforms from November 10th.