Amelia’s Children

Amelia's Children (A Semente do Mal, 2024) is a Gothic horror you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Gabriel Abrantes. After a DNA test, Edward — raised in an American orphanage — finally locates his birth family: a mother and a twin brother living in a remote mountain villa in northern Portugal. He flies out with his girlfriend Ryley.

Edward is overwhelmed. Ryley is watching. The mother is warm, the brother is quiet in ways that are hard to name, and the local villagers give the property a wide berth. Ryley starts pulling at closed doors and sealed rooms, and what she finds underneath the welcome threatens to destroy them both. Bridgette Lundy-Paine and Alba Baptista anchor the international cast alongside Portuguese actors Carloto Cotta and Anabela Moreira.

Gabriel Abrantes uses northern Portugal's mountain light and stone architecture as slow-building dread. The horror here is methodical rather than frantic — and that patience is the point. Stream Amelia's Children (2024) online on iFILM.