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Writer's pictureLagoa Nerd

A Mother's Embrace -the horror of the rains is more sinister with mysterious events

Marjorie Estiano came out at the end of the year with four productions that played at major festivals, one of them being talked about for its horror content called Abraço de Mãe (Mother's Embrace).


Abraço de Mãe
Abraço de Mãe

Mother's Embrace is a horror film that mixes the supernatural with psychological terror and one of nature's greatest fears: heavy rain. Directed by Argentinian Cristian Ponce, the film is now available on Netflix


The plot takes place during the flood of February 1996, which devastated the city of Rio de Janeiro and left deep scars. The event, one of the most intense storms in Rio's history, serves as a backdrop for the psychological terror that the character Ana (Marjorie Estiano), a firefighter, faces as she struggles to survive while trying to save people from a house about to collapse in the rains


In this plot, we follow a firefighter in the midst of one of the heaviest rains in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the terror of the waters that cause terrible inconvenience and material damage, as well as loss of life that affects the psyche.


abraço de mãe
abraço de mãe

Ana (Marjorie Estiano), a young firefighter who was removed after suffering a shock caused by a panic attack due to past traumas and is returning to her duties after some time away, is put to the test along with her team as they try to ensure safety and try to take people from a house in a state that has much of its structure compromised to a safer place, but the people there act in increasingly strange ways and each time the team of firefighters to which Ana belongs enters the place they realise that there are more sinister things and with high doses of danger in the midst of an incessant rain.

Marjorie Estiano's great acting presence elevates the plot, interspersing moments of strength and vitality with those of internal and mental fragility, reminiscent of the performances of Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver in the Halloween and Alien franchises respectively. The action-horror factor could have been better utilised with a more adapted and more intriguing script, since it uses elements of the supernatural to show the sinister amidst the rain storms or tell us a little more about the psyche of Cristina's mother (played by Chandelly Braz) and the traumatic effects on her daughter.


abraço de mãe
abraço de mãe

Despite the clichés that even involve cults, the film ends up leaving things unanswered or losing the focus of the narrative or leaving things a little more unexplained, such as what happened to Mourão, the brigade driver

What the creature with tentacles that was in the depths of the house's water had to do with the people and the reasons for the connection that enveloped them in a mother's embrace.


I liked the type of photography, which alternated between the vivid cold to the sepia of an old and poorly maintained house or the use of sound amidst the sounds of incessant rain or even submersion and the interesting special effects.

Abraço de mãe (Mother's Embrace).is a different kind of brazilian horror but I believe it will attract a good audience although I thought the plot could have been more expository in explaining what the house and the people were involved in but there's no doubt that Marjorie Estiano shines on screen.


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