A Mother's Embrace (2 Stars)

This is the seventh film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

It's a Brazilian film made in Portuguese. I usually tag films by their language, not by their country, but this might not be appropriate in the case of Brazil. The language spoken in Brazil is Portuguese, but I've been told that the dialect is so different that people from Brazil and Portugal can barely understand one another.

Ana is a firefighter. There are heavy floods, and her team is called to a nursing home by someone claiming it's collapsed. It was a false alarm. The nursing home is still standing, but when the team examines the building they're convinced that it's in such a poor state that it has to be evacuated. The home's owner objects. The fire team's work is made difficult by carnivorous monsters that live below the home. The old people in the home aren't human. They're shape shifters, and one of them takes the form of Ana's mother. Or is it really her mother? When we discussed the film afterwards there were different opinions.

It's a terrifying horror film, but my overall impression is negative. When the film ended there were still too many loose ends. I prefer the mysteries in films to be explained.