The Eyes of My Mother

When genre mae­stro John Car­pen­ter was asked what makes an effec­tive hor­ror film, he pith­ily answered, ​“It should be scary.” This may seem reduc­tive, but watch­ing Nico­las Pesce’s insipid The Eyes of My Moth­er, it’s clear that some direc­tors should make sure they’ve mas­tered the basics before they try to do some­thing new with­in the genre.

This debut fea­ture is about a girl, Fran­cis­ca (played by Olivia Bond and Kika Mag­a­l­haes), who descends into a life of mad­ness and grue­some vio­lence after wit­ness­ing her moth­er butchered by a crazed trav­el­ling sales­man (Will Brill).

The film is shot in black-and-white and there are plen­ty of great macabre com­po­si­tions, includ­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing one of a cow’s head on a table. But the deci­sion to film in mono­chrome sig­nals that per­haps Pesce wasn’t entire­ly cer­tain whether he want­ed to make a tra­di­tion­al hair-rais­ing thriller, or a more stylised art-house chiller. In the end he doesn’t real­ly achieve either.

One of the most prob­lem­at­ic aspects of this film is its incon­sis­tent pac­ing. The open­ing sequence feels rushed, as the moth­er is hacked to pieces before any ten­sion is built up. The way the sto­ry ini­tial­ly unfolds cul­ti­vates the expec­ta­tion that this will be a psy­cho­log­i­cal medi­a­tion on how trau­ma can trans­form a vic­tim into a cal­lous murderer.

Instead, Pesce gives his char­ac­ters uncon­vinc­ing moti­va­tions such as when one says of killing that it, ​“feels amaz­ing”. And while there’s a twist­ed Freudi­an log­ic behind the mater­nal instincts Fran­cis­ca dis­plays towards her mother’s killer, this point is so heavy-hand­ed that it com­plete­ly dimin­ish­es any broad­er impact. And for all the night­mar­ish poten­tial of this sto­ry, the actors appear to be serene­ly sleep­walk­ing in their parts.

The detached, almost inhu­man per­for­mances suc­ceed at times in lend­ing an eeri­ness to the film, but there’s some­thing ris­i­ble rather than haunt­ing in the monot­o­ne deliv­ery of a line such as, ​“I killed [my father]”.