‘Amelia’s Children’ Review — This Is Why I’m Never Having Kids

The Big Picture

• Amelia’s Children
  lacks humor and cleverness, falling flat with banal horror elements.
• The film briefly touches on bizarre moments, like a dance scene, but fails to explore its full potential.
• Brigette Lundy-Paine manages to bring some life to clunky dialogue.

Though the year is still quite young, it’s hard to think of a horror film that will be as baffling as Amelia’s Children. This isn’t a compliment. Where there have been plenty of horror films released that challenge the form by taking a familiar story in unexpected directions or create a hand-crafted vision that’s one-of-a-kind, this just opts for the familiar part while forgetting about any of that pesky unique business. The baffling part comes in how it relies on an almost soap opera-level premise that it repeatedly tells you is creepy when it is actually unintentionally comedic. However, while some of the ludicrous developments and forced character shifts can be humorous in an abstract sense, they still fall flat no matter how much it tries to explain them. Despite its premise, the film never gives birth to anything meaningful. Its only value comes in providing the most effective warning against having children. If the experience is anything like this, it’s an utter nightmare in all the wrong ways.

What Is ‘Amelia’s Children’ About?

This all begins with the abduction of a child. Years later, we meet Edward (Carloto Cotta) who is now living in New York City and is looking to connect with a biological family he has never known. With the support of his girlfriend Riley (Brigette Lundy-Paine), he takes a genetic test for his birthday that reveals they are living in Portugal and have also been looking for him. Though nervous about making contact, Edward decides to travel there with Riley so that he can finally understand more of where he came from. It is there he discovers his twin Manuel (also played by Cotta in what appears to be an awful wig) and wealthy mother Amelia (Anabela Moreira) who, in addition to seemingly undergoing extensive plastic surgery, is also in ailing health. This, apparently, is the perfect time to come for a visit after all these years.

As Edward and Riley navigate this already strange situation, they soon discover there may also be something darker to this family. Written and directed by Gabriel Abrantes, it plays like a cross between something more like Get Out and the terrifying “Teddy Perkins” episode of the series Atlanta. The only trouble is that it lacks any of the earned humor or cleverness that both of those works had. Instead, it all takes itself painfully seriously. While there is a more dark comedy lurking within Amelia’s Children, it never comes to the surface as it all gets drowned under thuddingly dull dialogue and a frustrating lack of genuine scares. Even as the film is competently shot here and there, it is all in service of increasingly very little.

And then there is the scene about midway through where the family trio dances to “The Girl From Ipanema.” It feels like the point where Amelia’s Children is finally starting to get a little more weird and wacky after wandering around in the dark. There is something so bizarre about it that you wonder why it didn’t use this as a point to really go off the rails. It’s distinctly uncomfortable, depressing, and humorous all at once. The tragedy is that the film then gets back to the more banal beats you’ve seen a million times in a horror film. Namely, we cut to Riley who is beginning to piece together what is happening at the luxurious home. The key revelation is played with a straight face, creating a rather jarringly comedic clash with the dance party that apparently went for what seems like the hours that she was gone.

When Riley then arrives home, observing the sons and their mother in the midst of still dancing, it’s so ridiculous that you can’t help laughing. “Why are you ruining this moment?” Amelia then asks, but you can’t help feeling like this question would be better put to Abrantes. As the film then returns to its more forced attempts at horror, with contrived conflict after conflict between Riley and Edward proving to be exhausting, the brief glimpse of boldness is banished from the movie. Instead, it all trudges along with little of anything to match the absurd big swing of that one moment. Without tipping off what Amelia wants, the simultaneously supernatural and more squeamish details are something the film hammers home to the point that they lose any impact. We and Riley already have it all figured out, though the film keeps dancing around it until the ending drags us to a hollow close.

Brigette Lundy-Paine Deserves Better Than ‘Amelia’s Children’

Much like Riley is trying to escape from the house and the strange family, one wishes Lundy-Paine was able to get out of the film itself. They have such a unique charisma that it almost makes certain scenes work, but the overall experience also saddles the character with mostly being the one who uncovers all of the exposition. This is a shame as Lundy-Paine has been great in everything from Bill & Ted Face the Music to the upcoming I Saw the TV Glow. Where the lines that Cotta gives almost always come out sounding clunky, which is doubly bad considering there are two of him, Lundy-Paine at least gives them some life. However, even they can’t redeem a bizarre conversation about Idaho and potatoes which, as someone born in the state, is a joke that was tired two decades ago. Had Amelia’s Children leaned into moments like these, it almost could play as some bizarre form of anti-humor, but the film is never sufficiently self-aware enough for that. Even as it goes out with a bang, in more ways than one, this only proves to be more of a whimper when done so haphazardly.

Amelia’s Children is in theaters and on VOD in the U.S. Click below for showtimes.

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