The Eyes of My Mother

'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.

I went into this knowing a little about it and came out pleasantly surprised. A fantastic psychological horror film and a great character study. I loved the black-and-white filter. It added to the already unsettling feel. The music and camera work also added to the suspense. Clocking in at just 76 minutes, it may seem short but the run time is actually one of it's many strengths. It never feels bloated and never overstays it's welcome. It's a slow moving film, but I never felt disinterested. In fact, I was sucked in from beginning to end. This is indie horror at it's best. I loved it so much, that right after it ended, I ordered the Blu-Ray off of Amazon. Who said that the horror genre was dead?

It has been a while since a film has truly disturbed me. 'The Eyes of My Mother' is a minimalist film with a foreboding sense of isolation that I haven't felt in a long time. As a massive horror fan, few films can cause me to have a sick feeling in my stomach, but this was one of them. Unique, concise and unsettling. There is nothing extra in this film; no fluff, the 1 hour and 16 minute runtime is perfect to accomplish all that is needed.

The limited dialogue and black and white filter give it a surreal aspect, and the POV being from the protagonist solely is quite effective. It invoked feelings of sadness, terror, and disgust while viewing. Ultimately, it was a glimpse into the macabre that we don't get from garden variety Hollywood Horror.

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.

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.

http://cinemagardens.com