Amelia’s Children, 2024.
Written and Directed by Gabriel Abrantes.
Starring Carloto Cotta, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Alba Baptista, Anabela Moreira, Sónia Balacó, Rita Blanco, Nuno Nolasco, Beatriz Maia, Valdemar Santos, and Ana Tang.
SYNOPSIS:
Edward searches for biological family in Portugal. He finds a villa and reunites with his long-lost mother and twin. But their shared past holds a dark secret that will forever change his understanding of his identity and origins.
It is unfortunate how fast Amelia’s Children (written and directed by Gabriel Abrantes) transitions into something generic and familiar immediately following a rather tense sequence centered on something as horrifying as infant children being abducted at night from their home. Granted, the film does give away that something supernatural is at play during that opening, but still, the idea of a man 30ish years later finding a twin relative (through a convenient ancestry technological device) and returning to that creepy, isolated, massive Portuguese home, bringing along his partner, all to meet the mom, the titular Amelia, he was stolen from and get reacquainted with this family has eerie potential.
After an onslaught of the usual reality-bending visions and nightmares that typically make up clichéd horror movies like this, Amelia’s Children reveals the nature of the supernatural aspect to much disappointment. The longer it goes on, the more its attempts at scares become forced and unintentionally hilarious through an overblown score that, at one particular bit during the third act, practically begs the viewer to be freaked out by something that anyone paying attention will have already seen coming.
Admittedly, there are a few twisted, depraved ideas here, but they don’t register as fully effective since the rest of the script is plagued with questionable writing and out-of-character moments, desperation jump scares, dumb decision-making, hilarious plot conveniences (I hope Google wrote a fat check for how important their language translator comes in handy here, reciting lines with specificity imitating delayed pauses), the requisite locals warning not to go anywhere near that house with all the subtlety of a chainsaw, and again, that weak supernatural angle. Everything about the premise is unsettling, only to be botched in several ways.
This is made all the more frustrating because the central performances from Carloto Cotta’s (performing triple duty playing all three siblings) Edward and his partner Ryley (Brigette Lundy-Paine, supposedly a revelation in the upcoming I Saw the TV Glow, which is believable considering her solid work here) are grounded in ways that understand the inherent creepiness of this situation that they find themselves in. When characters here realize that they should probably leave this place, they don’t, but at least their idiocy is coming from an understandable place of one man wanting to comprehend the family he comes from. Ryley is also distanced from this family and smart enough not to get sucked into the mind games.
They know something is not right here, considering the unpleasant facial condition of Edward’s mom (Anabela Moreira plays Amelia in the modern-day, and Alba Baptista plays her in brief flashbacks) and the fact that his twin brother looks like a long-lost Charles Manson follower, behaving just as unsettling as one. Without fully giving away what is happening here, Edward and Ryley soon discover that his twin and mother are plotting something.
The narrative trajectory of Amelia’s Children is so telegraphed, derivative, and predictable. Its story is playing with some nasty ideas and does have some impressively grotesque makeup effects, and it is, at the very least, entertaining horror schlock becoming absurd in its climax, but none of it compares to the genuine suspense of that opening scene. A stronger film might dive into how the truth would psychologically destroy someone, but that’s all chess pieces for shock value here. It trades exploring something terrifying, doubling down on bland, half-cooked supernatural elements.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
