Director: Gurcius Gewdner, Gustavo Vinagre
Year: 2026
Country: Brazil
Alternate Titles: Privadas de Suas Vidas
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Living in a Brazilian slum, a woman traumatized by a toilet encounter that has rendered her incontinent finds growing reason to believe that something has come to life and infected the toilets in the neighborhood, forcing her and the other residents to deal with the situation before it consumes them.
Review:
For the most part, this was a rather fun if somewhat unconventional genre effort. One of the better factors here is that it goes far more in-depth than expected, with the characters’ traumas and backstories being more involved than expected. Rather than simply providing a simple way of giving everyone’s name and then moving on, this one goes for far more detail than expected, with the main girl shown to be genuinely traumatized about using a toilet following a serious accident one year ago that has resulted in a case of constipation that is quite logical in how it builds up throughout here. The fact that it involves a twin to her now-neglected daughter’s nonbinary existence, which is fueled by the arrival of the influencer also having twins as she did, just adds more trauma to everything else going on around her as the lives of the residents in the building and surrounding community are upended by a series of increasingly bizarre and chaotic scenarios playing out. Other factors here, from the bizarre mystic known for working with scatological material to get her readings to the retiring plumber forced into service since no one will be available when he’s gone, help contribute immensely to this bizarre setup and work rather nicely overall.
That’s where the film comes together as a vehicle for the series of encounters involving the unhinged toiletry scenario going on in the community. With people shown to be attacked violently while seated on the toilet going to the bathroom, the mixture of grotesque gore and off-putting actions makes for a generally uneasy time trying to get used to the type of film this is. As time goes on and more unnatural things happen, including snatching animals or full victims as a result of the curse being released, there’s a generally frenetic sense of danger that’s present as this goes about trying to make the curse come to fruition as multiple victims are ambushed while sitting on the toilet or in places where the piping nearby can still reach them. Again, the mixture of gross-out scatological content and more traditional gore-drenched ideas featured here might be a bit difficult to get into, especially when its campy nature is an acquired taste not all would be fine with, but these are all that make for a fun enough time here.
There are some big factors here that bring this one down. The main issue here, outside of the aforementioned bit of trouble getting into the gross-out style of content featured here, is the genuinely troubling tempo on display here, where it’s far longer than it should be due to these overblown elements on display. This spends quite a lot of time building up the characters around the community, from the mother with her bowel issues trying to raise her troubled sibling, with the whole thing impacting her party-planning business, the lives of the affected residents in the apartment building finding out how badly cursed the toilets are, and the general state of the other individuals living near them that come into their orbit that manages to hold up the pace so it feels really sluggish in the first hour dragging all these different plot points together. While there’s fun content here that’s important for understanding what’s going on, it does so by stretching out what’s happening until it stops being useful and feels more like padding, and it drags this out somewhat. These, along with the lack of information about how the curse started or even works, tend to be what bring this down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A wild and entertaining if slightly flawed genre effort, there’s a lot to like here which manages to hold this one up against a few small flaws present in here that keep this one from being the all-out genre cheesefest it wants to be. Those with an appreciation for this style or approach or who are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like here, while most others will want to heed caution.
This review ran as part of our coverage of the 2026 edition of the Fantasia Film Festival. Click here to follow the rest of our articles about the festivities!
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