THIS striking, beautifully grotesque debut feature from director Nicolas Pesce does more in its minimalist 76-minute runtime to make sure you’re thoroughly creeped out than most horrors you’re likely to see fill the multiplexes, dealing with trauma and grief in a potent, haunting and endlessly disturbing fashion.
Split into three distinct segments entitled Mother, Father and Family, respectively, we open at a secluded American farmhouse where a Portuguese mother (Diana Agostini), a trained surgeon back in her home country, is teaching her young daughter Francisca (Olivia Bond) animal anatomy while the father (Paul Nazak) is away on an errand.
Suddenly a mysterious but at first very friendly stranger (Will Brill) arrives on their doorstep. His request to use the bathroom soon turns sinister, shattering the hitherto peaceful lives of the family and traumatizing Francisca forever.
Years later, Francisca (now played by a spellbinding Kika Magalhaes) is living with her increasingly detached father, trying her best to live a normal life but both dragged down by the brutality of her childhood while trying to connect with the outside world.
From its opening frame this is a film soaked in skilfully conjured creepiness born out of a deft combination of deeply unsettling imagery that feels designed to burn into your memory forever, as well as a relentless feeling of uncertainty about what’s going to happen next.
It’s an uncomfortable, disquietingly up-close-and-personal film with a compelling and unrelenting fascination with detail, facial expressions and subtle body language that helps draw you in and make sure you’re really paying attention to what’s happening, Here is a tremendously arresting and confident piece of filmmaking that’s never afraid to take chances or present a seemingly ordinary scene from a unique perspective. Pesce’s decision to linger longingly on one scene while in others presenting you with something troubling before cutting away like a knife slitting the throat of the scene shows a boldness usually reserved for far more experienced filmmakers.
It’s shot in stark, absorbing black and white which gives the whole thing an atmosphere that’s both grounded and otherworldly; it feels like it exists in a world out of time and of its own. The terrifically conjured soundscape that combines deafening silences, natural noises around the farmhouse and a unnerving score of ambient drones and sporadic piano notes mercilessly claws at your ears throughout. This beautiful, artistic filmmaking sensibility brilliantly offsets the often horrifying nature of what’s being portrayed on-screen.
This unforgettable portrait of a woman trying to fill a lonely void with a warped sense of companionship is twisted and disturbing in all the best ways, with a vein of deep sadness and regret running through it as it tries everything in its power to get acutely under your skin.
THE EYES OF MY MOTHER in cinemas now.
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