Four Hours of Oxygen (Cuatro horas de oxígeno)

When a woman suspects that her mother is not dead but has been buried alive, she begins a race against time to save her—unaware that she is about to uncover a web of manipulation and family secrets that will force her to make an irreversible decision.

On the day of Vivianne Blackmoor’s funeral, her daughter Rebecca returns from London with a persistent feeling that something is wrong. Vivianne had been a strong, healthy woman until her sudden death. During the ceremony, as the coffin lies open, Rebecca thinks she sees a slight movement in her mother’s face. No one else notices. Nikos, Vivianne’s young husband, attributes it to shock and orders the coffin sealed as quickly as possible.

Back at the family mansion, Rebecca begins to notice cracks in her stepfather’s behavior: his coldness, his obsession with controlling every detail of the funeral, and above all, an unsettling discovery in her mother’s office—a newly installed document shredder. Piecing together the shredded papers, Rebecca finds three key elements: a one-million-pound life insurance policy naming Nikos as the beneficiary; a handwritten note from Vivianne expressing regret for not having told her “the truth” in time and directing her to a hidden diary; and a copy of a will in which Nikos receives only a symbolic portion of the inheritance.

The diary contains a revelation that changes everything: the women of the Blackmoor family suffer from catalepsy, a hereditary condition that can cause states of apparent death lasting for hours. Vivianne describes her constant fear of being buried alive. For Rebecca, the conclusion is immediate and devastating: if her mother experienced a cataleptic episode, she could still be alive underground—and would have only four hours of oxygen.

Desperate, Rebecca rushes to the cemetery with the help of Elijah, her ex-boyfriend and the local fire chief. They break into the family mausoleum in a frantic race against time. But when they open the coffin, they find a truth even worse: it is empty. Vivianne’s body has disappeared.

From that moment on, the question is no longer whether Vivianne was buried alive, but what happened between the church and the mausoleum.

Rebecca begins her own investigation, questioning funeral home staff and uncovering inconsistencies in Nikos’s account. At the same time, she starts experiencing visions of her mother and anxiety episodes that make everyone—including herself—question her mental stability. The local police begin to view her with suspicion, and a dark episode from her past resurfaces: years earlier, a young man from the village named Callum disappeared after attempting to sexually assault her, a case never solved in which Rebecca was always considered a suspect.

During the reading of the will, another twist emerges: against all expectations, Rebecca inherits almost the entire Blackmoor fortune and the mansion. Nikos is left with a humiliating inheritance—only his car. Rebecca also receives a key granting access to the west wing of the house, closed for years.

In that wing, she discovers a secret passage leading to a peephole from which Vivianne’s study can be observed unnoticed. There she finally finds her mother, alive and hiding in the sealed-off section of the house. Vivianne did not fake her death from the start: she truly suffered a cataleptic episode, was declared dead and buried, but managed to escape the coffin. From that moment on, she turned her own burial into the catalyst for a much larger plan, using the chaos to manipulate everyone around her.

Vivianne accuses Nikos of trying to poison her, but it soon becomes clear that her version is just another piece in a carefully constructed web of lies. She demands Rebecca’s help and reminds her of the debt that binds them: it was Vivianne who concealed Callum’s body—the young man who tried to rape Rebecca—burying him in the grandfather’s niche with the complicity of the butler. For Rebecca, this revelation marks a point of no return: she understands that her mother is neither victim nor survivor, but the source of the violence that has defined their lives.

Vivianne now wants to kill Nikos and bury him in the coffin meant for her. Rebecca pretends to comply while searching for a way out of the plan. Meanwhile, Vivianne begins speaking freely and ultimately confesses to having also murdered Rebecca’s father, staging his death as a heart attack. Nikos, who has been listening to everything, reveals himself and, enraged at the scale of the manipulation, brutally beats Vivianne, leaving her unconscious.

It is at that moment that Rebecca makes her final decision. She understands that Nikos is capable of violence—but also that Vivianne has always been the mastermind behind every horror. She does not act on impulse, but with painful clarity: if she does not break the cycle, she will be trapped in it forever. Rebecca locks her mother inside her own coffin, imposing the same sentence that has haunted their story from the beginning—four hours of oxygen.

RELEVANT INFORMATION: Riccardo Braccaioli is an Italian author specializing in crime and mystery thrillers. He has written several noir series highly popular among crime readers, some of which have been recognized in competitions such as the Amazon Storyteller Award for their innovation and editorial impact.

Cuatro horas de oxígeno is a thriller with strong audiovisual potential, packed with tension and sharp, decisive twists that lend themselves perfectly to a feature film or limited series adaptation.

The four-hour countdown functions as a powerful dramatic engine, while Rebecca’s transformation—from vulnerable daughter to heir fully aware of her own power—offers a compelling emotional arc for the screen. The story is easily relocatable and adaptable to different settings without losing its impact.

AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Feature Film, TV Movie.

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.