You know, she had to, because as long as they saw off their legs, they couldn't leave her, so, she thought: I'll never be alone again.
That's basically how The Eyes of My Mother (aka "Mother's Eyes") will make you feel. Nicholas Pesce's stunning and terrifying debut has quickly found its place in the modern horror genre. The scene in the film is a rural version of True Crime: a girl named Francesca (Olivia Bond) lives in the country with her parents, a Portuguese mother and an old-fashioned Midwest farmer. One day, while his father is away, a stranger named Charlie (Bill Brill) shows up and asks if he can use their toilet. The mother and the audience knew that this man looked like a grotesque Mormon missionary who must have had bad intentions.
But the plot is always going in the direction of horror. When the father returns home and finds his daughter sitting quietly in the kitchen while the guests are doing nefarious things in the toilet, the plot reverses. Soon, Charlie was tied up in the barn. He asked Francesca, "You're going to kill me, right?" The girl stitched up a wound for him and replied, "Why should I kill you? You're my only friend."
What follows is the rapid growth of a serial killer, with black and white images reminiscent of criminal photos from forensic files, Zach Kuperstein's monochromatic photography is beautiful and terrifying, Ariel Loh's soundtrack goes from moaning to humming, Insinuating a complete mental breakdown—now, a grown-up Francesca (Kika Magalhaes) confirms what her mother once said: "Loneliness makes the mind strange."
The film continues to rock the audience, sympathizing with the miserable, twisted soul on the one hand, and nervously watching her turn victims into playthings or packages in her refrigerator.
A girl takes a gentle milk bath for a corpse; a long shot shows a man stumbled and groped for directions in a field; a silhouette of a girl burying a corpse is projected at midnight—perhaps seeing this terrifyingly beautifully composed scene You'll be dumbfounded, your stomach will turn over and over again, and your lunch you've just eaten will be wasted.
Since the film was produced by Borderline Films, which also produced independent films including 2008's After School and 2011's Double Sided Martha, you might think "My Mother's Eye" would also feature The nihilistic imprint it does best. But in fact, Nicholas Pesce's films are more like the horror style of the early seventies. At that time, there was a wave of horror films set in the American countryside, and the murderous demons in them were basically the same as ordinary neighbors when they did not wear human skin masks.
Maybe "My Mother's Eye" is too graphic style in some places, and the ending is too rushed, but it is like American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin's works related to death and corpses come to life and make the blood of the audience. The instant solidification also allows the audience to see how a girl isolated in the shadow of her parents goes crazy in loneliness.
This article was first published on the Barcelona Film APP
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