Netflix has a sequel to a four-year-old thriller series that has suddenly rocketed up the charts and is well worth the wait. In 2019, Pedro Morelli created the Brazilian series Brotherhood, a crime drama series that stars Naruna Costa as Cristina, an honest lawyer who learns her brother Edson (Seu Jorge) is imprisoned and leads a criminal faction called the Brotherhood. She is forced to become a police informant and work against her brother by infiltrating the Brotherhood. The series ran for two seasons and 14 episodes on Netflix. Now, Morelli has made a spinoff movie, and it is hitting it big on Netflix.
State of Fear is a spin-off movie from Pedro Morelli, and Naruna Costa returns as Cristina, as she has to use her underworld connections to help the police rescue her kidnapped niece. Seu Jorge is also back as Edson. According to FlixPatrol, the movie hit Netflix on February 12 and already hit number one on the streaming site’s worldwide streaming charts. In the United States, it reached seventh overall by its second day of release.
What to Expect From State of Fear on Netflix
State of Fear sees the Brotherhood members in a state of flux when their main leaders are transferred to maximum-security prisons, which threatens the group’s survivability. When the group’s founder, Edson, learns his teenage daughter, Elisa (Camilla Damião), was kidnapped by corrupt cops, her aunt, Cristina, sets out to rescue her. However, the Brotherhood orders the State of Fear, which is a series of attacks on police stations that sends São Paulo into chaos.
The movie goes a long way in delivering the action and tone that fans of Brotherhood had come to expect. State of Fear also helps to wrap up some open character story arcs from the original series, while leaving the door open for more stories down the line. As the first-ever spin-off from a Netflix Brazil original, this could also open the door for a lot of movies like this to hit the streaming service. This is always a good thing, as Netflix brings in countless hours of international shows and movies to open people’s eyes to worldwide cultures and entertainment.
The film is a fantastic crime drama tragedy with a gut-punch ending that offers a realistic look at the world of crime that Brazilian dramas have specialized in for years now. While it might be easy to compare State of Fear to Fernando Meirelles’ masterpiece City of God, that would be a mistake, because this movie doesn’t come close to the level of that crime drama. However, taken on its own merits, or even better, as a continuation of the great Brotherhood series, this is a Netflix original movie that deserves the viewing numbers it has received.
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