"Hoping to find a new home, we could not escape the dangers."
Not as much as previous Disney films, but that doesn't mean you won't find unnerving yet alone terrifying themes and imagery in Encanto. This IS a Disney movie after all, and co-director/writer Charise Castro Smith has worked in horror before.- The scene with Mirabel in Bruno's room assembling pieces of the prophecy together until sand suddenly starts flooding in. She only manages to avoid drowning because its weight forces the door open from the inside.
- The pre-Colombian style wall carvings outside his room are also unnerving, especially when rats appear and go up into one with agape eyes and mouth.
- "We Don't Talk About Bruno" is pretty foreboding, but the scariest part is that Bruno's a perfectly decent man, and all his family (besides Dolores) is doing is giving one big, unchecked character assassination to one of their relatives based off of rumours and petty misunderstandings.
- Mirabel finds Casita's secret passageway and sees a rat scurrying through the dark corridor with a vision fragment, until suddenly the glowing shard is lifted up and a flash of lightning reveals the boogeyman himself. It's a decent Jump Scare since there's another flash featuring an up-close shot of Bruno giving Mirabel a grim look.
- Alma flying into a rage and blaming Mirabel for everything, from the miracle fading away to Luisa's gift disappearing to Isabela "going wild", and poor Luisa and Isabela can only shamefully look at Alma and look down in shame as their baby sister gets chewed out by their grandmother for not having her own gift as they were equally hurt by how little Alma thinks of them, even with their gifts. This also gets Mirabel to realize that Alma views her sisters (or anyone else) no different from the way she views Mirabel herself. This moment is ultimately what gives way to Casita's collapse.
- Casita finally falling apart. While Mirabel desperately tries to rescue the candle, her home crumbles around her and she almost gets killed by Bruno's tower when it topples over her. Meanwhile, her family is helpless to save Mirabel because they've all lost their gifts at this point on top of having their own problems.
- A few moments stick out, like how Antonio almost gets crushed by his own door as it falls only to be saved by Félix, and Isabela and Camilo losing their powers when they try to save the candle just like Mirabel. Meanwhile, Bruno just barely makes it out from behind the walls, and Casita desperately pushes everyone else out the front door before helping Mirabel reach the candle. It's pretty much using the architectural equivalent of its dying breaths to save its family before it gives way completely.
- The simple fact that Mirabel, Isabela and Camilo were willing to risk their lives to save the candle. Word of God has confirmed that all their whole lives they’ve been told that the candle is the most important thing in the Encanto, so in just a few seconds it is shown that Alma's mentality that miracle and gifts are the most important of all it has been transferred to her grandchildren in the worst possible way to the point that they were prioritizing magic over their own well-being.
- The destruction causes one of the mountains in the background to split in half with a deafening boom. When Mirabel sang earlier that she would "move the mountains," this probably isn't what she meant.
- On top of that, there's the other family members desperately trying to get Mirabel out of the house.
- Then there's the music. Holy shit the music. It pretty much captures how terrifying it is to have your own house collapse all around you.
- Losing their gifts. It's hard to say what's worse-losing a longed-for gift you've only had for a few days (Antonio) or losing a gift you've had most of your life and built your whole identity around (the other Madrigals.)
- The faceless men on horseback who killed Pedro, Alma's husband and Mirabel's grandfather, invoke Nothing Is Scarier. Who they were and what they were after is never actually explained within the film, but doing some digging on Colombian history will give you three equally gruesome answers: they were either bandits that terrorized the countryside for centuries, armed citizens involved in one of the many Colombian Civil Wars, or a reference to the book One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad), which involves a mass killing based off of the Banana Massacre of 1928. It's some bleak Mood Whiplash in a film that was pretty vibrant and fun up until that point.
- Lots of viewers assumed the faceless men on horseback are carrying simple swords. They are not. They are carrying machetes. The people they killed, including Pedro? It was unquestionably a brutal death. Maybe it’s just as well that we never see the men on horseback cut Pedro down, instead seeing Alma’s Death Wail.
- Doubles as Tear Jerker, but Mirabel going missing moments after surviving a collapse that could have killed her scares and worries the family half to death, as they spent presumably hours desperately searching for her and have no idea if she truly is injured from the collapse.
- Some of the imagery during "Surface Pressure" can be quite disturbing, particularly the sights of Luisa nearly being crushed under all of the weight she carries and this movie's depiction of Cerberus.
- Generally, the entire song acting like a visual for how dangerously close Luisa is to a nervous breakdown. Adds a whole new unsettling meaning to her lyric "til you just go pop".
