The Meltdown Film Review: An Ice Cold Mystery

The Meltdown, Manuela Martelli’s second feature, follows a 9-year-old trying to find answers when her new friend disappears at a ski resort in Chile.

A group of German athletes come to stay at the resort whilst they are training and Inés takes a particular liking to Hanna (Maia Domagala), a girl that’s closest to her age. 

The Meltdown doesn’t seem to have a sense of where the direction is going at first, but when Hanna disappears one night, the tone shifts from a character study of Inés to an icy cold mystery. Inés doesn’t have all the answers, but she knows more than most as she’s a curious 9-year-old. Hanna is only 15, but she seems way older compared to Inés, smoking cigarettes and attempting to drink alcohol at the hotel bar. Maybe Inés looks up to Hanna, or maybe she’s jealous of her maturity; either way, the two get on well and spend a lot of time together in the brief time they know each other. 

O’Rourke is incredible as Inés, her first ever film role. She’s the center of attention, and whilst the narrative primarily revolves around Hanna’s disappearance, it’s told through the lens of Inés. We only drift into other rooms without her when it’s vital to the story to tell us something Inés doesn’t know, but what she can assume has happened anyway due to her intelligence. Even when Hanna’s mother Lina (Saskia Rosendahl, of Dying) arrives at the resort and wants answers from the authorities, we never stray from Inés, she’s always there. 

The dynamics between the characters is often unnerving, as we don’t know if anyone knows anything about the disappearance. Does Hanna’s instructor know more than he’s letting on? Or does Inés’ cousin, who Hanna spent some time with the night she went missing, have something to do with it? There’s plenty of loose ends for the police to latch onto, which they do as they look for her. But there are also many theories for Inés to try and investigate in her mind. Hanna seems like a complex teenager that is pushed too hard as an athlete, but we never get to dive deeper into her as a character. 

Manuela Martelli’s previous film Chile ‘76 feels like a natural predecessor to The Meltdown, continuing the themes of Chilean politics hinted at throughout. It definitely borders more on a drama crime film than a thriller, similar to that of Chile ‘76. It sometimes has some sluggish moments that drag on for too long which makes the pacing slightly off. The slow burn of the disappearance is needed, but after a while, the shots of the snow get a bit repetitive. Two snow dogs fill up the runtime and definitely make up for everything, though. Watching them run through the snow is reminiscent of Snoop the dog in Anatomy of a Fall (the definitive snow dog of all time).

Benjamin Echazarreta’s cinematography aids the film into being as bleak as it can be, contrasting the frosty outside to the wooden interiors lit with a fire in the corner of the room. It’s a cold film, both physically and metaphorically, but it could have dived deeper into Hanna as a character, to tell us more about her before she disappears, which would have made it even darker. O’Rourke is the standout of The Meltdown, in a performance that helps make the film an intriguing wintry drama told through the eyes of a 9-year-old. 

The Meltdown was screened at the BFI London Film Festival on October 13-14, 2026.