An era of rising anxiety around pregnancy and motherhood has led to a recent mini-explosion of horror films revolving around those themes, many decades after “Rosemary’s Baby” broke that particular ice. Andrea Corsini’s first feature film, “Ferine,” which expands on her 2019 short of the same name, manages to mix a paranoid and violent version of the same themes with a “Cat People”-style conceit of creature transformation. Like Paul Schrader’s 1982 version of the latter, this is a deluxe genre piece whose pretensions toward art are direct, beginning with a quote from none other than Schopenhauer.

The somewhat confusing story of a rich foreigner in Italy, driven wild by the pressures of motherhood lost and found, seems longer in lofty style than substance for some time. But the film, which recently premiered internationally in Fantasia, finally generates enough wicked froth to appeal to fans of cinematic fantasy in more sophisticated ways than the pulpy norm.

Irina, also known as Irene (Irish actress Carolyn Bracken, who played two roles in Damian McCarthy’s “Oddity”), is an apparent artist and collector drawn back to the turf of an estranged mother by her funeral. However, he is only just emerging from those fields, much to the dismay of high-profile gallerist Alfredo (Marco Gambino) and his former collaborator Till (Ilario Calvo). Having previously suffered numerous miscarriages, she has now turned to surrogacy and plans to adopt the unborn baby from a local Italian, Anita (Uliana Kuzmina). When the latter experiences postpartum panic about giving up her child, Irina simply sneaks out of the private hospital in the middle of the night, knowing that the destitute young woman is unlikely to pursue legal or other options.

Unfortunately, a prologue already alerts us that a wild animal being trafficked has escaped from its cage and its vehicle, fleeing towards the same forest that Irina’s driver is now passing through. A collision occurs, from which the adoptive mother and newborn survive, but the beast that caused the accident claims another victim. Afterwards, Irina is understandably traumatized and refuses to explain what happened to her closest friend, Rosa (Paola Lavini). She behaves increasingly strangely, developing a predatory carnivorous streak, as if invaded by the spirit of the exotic cat that had consumed “her” son.

Rosa suggests making it up to him by taking in little Giulia (Elisabetta Caccamo), an angelic girl with a neglectful addict mother (Elodie Gay). But this replacement adoption has strings attached, in the form of a father (Fabrizio Odetto) who had already been trying to lure Giulia away from her dissolute ex, and is unwilling to hand her over to a rich third party. Irina’s hunger and possessiveness increase, leading to the (off-screen) murder of anyone who stands in her way: her parenting or a meal.

Meanwhile, he’s about to meet his match in the icy, overbearing older woman known as Dama (Caroline Goodall), whose illicit trade has generated great wealth… but she recently had a problem with the rare escaped South American jaguar that now roams the countryside. In seeking out that four-legged creature, she is also willing to eliminate anyone who gains too much knowledge in her path and potentially acquire the even rarer curiosity of a two-legged beast that acts like a quadruped.

Corsini and Massimo Vavassori’s script is unnecessarily cryptic at times, leaving the central figure too abstracted. Are she and Rosa lovers? What exactly is Irina’s relationship with art: more of a painter or a patron? This is yet another film that rather clumsily aims for shock by focusing on consumption and meat, like many creepy eating disorder horrors of late. But when we witness the bloody, fleshy, corpse-gutting gallery performance of a “transgressive artist” with whom Irina has previously been associated, it’s like an unintentional European parody of things that were the vanguard of modern art forty or fifty years ago.

The suspense becomes more effective after the one-hour mark, once Dama takes control of the narrative, with Irina, Rosa and Giulia variably helped and hindered by her ironclad mechanizations. It’s not a huge surprise to see where things are headed, but the latest twist in a captivity that’s sure to go wrong works quite well as a twisted psychodrama.

“Ferine” has an elegant veneer in Fabrizio La Palombara’s panoramic cinematography, Pino Donaggio’s characteristically lush orchestral score, and Carlotta Desmann’s elegant production design. The house Irina lives in, a striking Brutalist mansion whose concrete sections rise to defy gravity, makes an important aesthetic contribution in itself. All of the actors are admirably committed (among them the attractive newcomer Caccamo), although at times one might wish their skill was spent on material less heavy-handed in its metaphors and more nuanced in the writing of its characters. In many ways, “Ferine” is an impressive first feature, but it also suffers from a familiar flaw: the director can be said to believe he is creating a singular masterpiece, and that assumption clouds results that aren’t brilliant or original enough to be taken so seriously.