The year is 1996, the country is Brazil, and young firefighter Ana (Marjorie Estiano) is returning to work after freezing up on the job. We see in flashback that, as a young child, she survived the horrific experience of her disturbed mother attempting to carry out a murder-suicide. Unluckily, one of her first jobs after returning to work is to respond to a call from a dilapidated nursing home in the middle of nowhere. The first sign that something is amiss when she and the crew rock up, is that nobody at the home will admit to having made the call in the first place. The place itself is also obviously trouble; it’s got the kind of damp in the walls that isn’t just a challenge for estate agents, but might also seep into your soul.
The stage is thus set for Ana’s past and present day perils to collide. Of course, people with traumatic backgrounds are 10 a penny in the horror genre at the moment; gone are the days when terror and unease sprang from the fact that this gnarly stuff was happening to a normal family, a nice young girl or an average bunch of teens, and could therefore happen to you, too. Perhaps film-makers have cottoned on to the fact that nobody really perceives themselves as having lived an untroubled life. Everybody is vulnerable.
A Mother’s Embrace turns out to be a minor but interestingly woozy and off-kilter entry into the canon of thoughtful trauma horror; its strongest suit is vibes and imagery, with the persistent queasy sensation that Ana has wandered into a bad dream. But is it her bad dream or someone else’s? The excellent and nightmarish production design suggests the answer doesn’t matter; she’s in trouble either way.
• A Mother’s Embrace is on digital platforms from 10 November.
