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‘Amelia’s Children’ Review: Returning to Portugal, an American Finds Some Nasty Surprises in His Family Tree
Portugal-based filmmaker Gabriel Abrantes ('Diamantino') helms Brigette Lundy-Paine and Carloto Cotta in modest horror fable 'Amelia's Children.'
The horror project makes for an intriguing follow-up to Lisbon-based filmmaker Gabriel Abrantes ’ much lighter 2018 feature “Diamantino” (that one co-directed with Daniel Schmidt), which lampooned soccer icon Cristiano Ronaldo’s patriotic celebrity with giant puppy dog daydream sequences and a prankish but tender queer romance. After a DNA-testing service tracks down the biological family he was kidnapped from as an infant, the 30-something and his devoted girfriend, Ryley ( Brigette Lundy-Paine), jet to Portugal to visit a locally notorious multi-million-dollar estate. Also serving as his own composer, the filmmaker puts together one impressively calibrated build after another for Lundy-Paine to navigate: loud nightmare sequences, cheeky jump scares and a bona fide movie monster in Amelia, who achieves just the right WTF effect to be both instantly repelling while stirring concern.
Or read this on Variety