The Eyes of My Mother

Spellbinding tale of an unwell, isolated young woman who has no idea that she's unwell. Just a mesmerizing performance by Kika Magalhães in the lead, and shot in exquisite black and white. It's a very dark, off-putting movie, and it's definitely not for everyone. Director Nicolas Pesce makes great use of the film's short running time (under 80 minutes) and relatively claustrophobic atmosphere. VERY well done.

The black and white and the Portuguese fado really set a great atmosphere in this movie. It sets the stage for a horrifying and disturbing story.

But until near the end of the movie nothing actually happens, except for some background story. The few dialogues are monosyllabic, scenes are cut just when they start to get interesting, and the entire movie is interspersed with long dragging static scenes and exaggerated time leaps. Character development here is practically zero.

When the real substance of the plot begins, the movie is 20 minutes from the end.

The choices made here are confusing. The entire movie is about 75 minutes long, and although they abuse static scenes (making it feel a lot longer, by the way), they couldn't spare 3 or 5 more minutes to make a decent ending. The ending is clear to the viewer, but as with all interesting scenes, it is cut short just before the climax.

'The Eyes of my Mother' is a morbid and austere little horror flick with a disturbing premise, disturbing imagery and heavy implications. Unfortunately, as with many other prestige horror movies with pretensions to high art, although it's beautifully shot in crisp b/w it suffers from a typical lack of ideas and intellectual depth, resulting in a depressing and empty experience, rather than an exhilarating, educating or illuminating one. Watch it and decide, but don't watch it with the family.

Incredibly well-made. Created with a confidence and assurance of the material, I was shocked to learn that it was from a first time director and writer. Saying that, I don't think the film goes as far as it needs to. I do feel like its very short running time is felt. It's not always the easiest film to watch, it's quite disturbing in a frighteningly quiet way. It's beautifully filmed and directed, with a stunning lead performance at its core. I'll see how it fares with me over time but as of now I like it quite a bit. 2016 has been a great year for horror and this only continues that tradition. I definitely recommend this for horror fans that want intelligence in their films.

It was a wicked horror tale that was worth watching. The movie starts with the shot that let's you know it's going to be a black and white film, totally setting the tone.

The film is about a girl name Francesca who lives a very isolated life on a farm with her mom and dad. Her mom was teaching her life lessons like how to surgically remove eyeballs from the cows. Then one day Francesca loses her mom to a violent crime and her father shortly after. This is when we learn what it's like for a little girl to become a woman literally all by herself.

Francesca experience some pretty violent acts as a child that were treated like every day life and with no one to teach her otherwise, she grows up with little to no filter on the value of human life, except for that one raw emotion she has not to be alone, but one that she has not learned how deal with like the rest of us.

This was like watching the slow development of like Micheal Myers or Jason Voorhees. It's really a stroke of good fortune nobody opened a camp in the near by area.

It's a very quiet story of horror, so quiet it does not really register as one, it also has elements of torture porn, which, like the horror is very quiet, but it only makes the actions of Francesca more disturbing to watch as she tries and fails to figure out how to make friends and start a new family, which produces deadly results.

An amazing work of art that I would recommend for horror fans.

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