At the end of the second act of a script, you want to hit that low point as hard as you can. You want to have that sense that all is lost.
("And then," one of my favorite screenwriting teachers used to say, with a big evil smile on his face, "at the top of Act III you want things to get even worse." It's actually a great piece of advice.)
ENCANTO does the low point really well--the spirit candle goes out, the family all lose their powers and the house literally collapses on top of Mirabel. Literally the last act of sentience of the building is to save her life.
But the thing I really love about the film's low point, the thing that makes it so horribly low, is that it happens despite the fact that Mirabel succeeds at what Bruno's prediction demanded. She actually did forge a genuine moment of connection with her sister Isabela, by giving Isabela the chance to finally share the burden she has lived under her own life. The moment is actually the crystallization of Mirabel's "power" per se, which is to help her siblings confront their burdens and lay them down.
The sisters hug, as Bruno predicted they needed to, the house gets better--it's all good. Then Abuela shows up and shatters everything.
In part the low point is so effective because we don't see it coming. We've been told it'll all be fine if Mirabel connects with Isabela and then it isn't. In other hands that could seem like a cheat on the writers' part, but we've already seen that Abuela is a huge problem in this family, so the fact that she would show up here and ruin everything actually makes sense. In fact it seems necessary; the only route to fixing this family goes through her.
Also, we've seen that Bruno's predictions tend to have a dark twist to them. Even the good predictions, such as that Isabela will get everything she dreams of, is really her nightmare scenario. So it has that unexpected and yet inevitable sense that you always aim for.
Mirabel also fights so hard to stop everything from falling apart once it's begun. And at every step once again the script gives us the sense that she just might succeed. She's able to climb Casita as it collapses. She grabs the candle as it's about to go out. As the house collapses around her it also saves her and the still-lit candle. And then despite all that, it still goes out.
The harder a character fights for something, the more invested we are in their success, and the more crushed we are by their failure.
Instinctively as audience we know that all has to be lost before things can get better. But even so, ENCANTO does such a great job of continuing to make us think she can pull it off, has her fight so hard and continue to succeed despite the odds, when it does all go south we really are right there with her in the ruins.
