The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Directed by Nicolas Pesce
A young, lonely woman is consumed by her deepest and darkest desires after tragedy strikes her quiet country life.
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What critics compared The Eyes of My Mother to
Pesce’s heartland Gothic visuals — specifically the very inky expanses of Zach Kuperstein’s glorious widescreen lensing — conjure spooked memories of Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter.”
Not so innocent is the leering home invader (Will Brill) who, in one terrifyingly framed interior shot, seems designed to bring back memories of Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter” (1955).
Shot, digitally, in beautifully composed black-and-white, this darkly comic feature about a young girl growing up in violent times is set on an isolated American farm that looks like it could be just down the road from where Charles Laughton’s classic and equally unclassifiable The Night of the Hunter was set.
The striking feature debut of music video director Nicolas Pesce is a poised and meticulously controlled slice of American gothic that blends together a slew of influences from Hitchcock to Haneke via David Lynch and The Night of the Hunter .
Writer/director Nicolas Pesce makes an accomplished transition from music videos with this darkly disturbing slice of American Gothic that wears its debts to Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) with quiet pride.
Así, psycho-killers tan célebres como el Norman Bates de Psicosis (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) o la chica con telequinesia de Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) encontraron una excusa para su enfado contra el mundo en la educación castradora recibida de unas madres de sexualidad frustrada y refugiadas en la religión, mientras que otros como May (Lucky McKee, 2002) o Willard (Glen Morgan, 2003) se construían su propio mundo de amigos imaginarios –rodeados por muñecas y ratas, respectivamente–, en respuesta al rechazo que sufrían desde pequeños por ser diferentes.
2016’s THE EYES OF MY MOTHER takes a similar approach, ushering in a small horror moment about young, socially isolated women who are seemingly trapped in a time that no longer exists.
Instead, West seems to delightfully frolic in other terrifying remembrances from yesterdecade with an unsettling setting similar to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) and the creepy cinematic stylings of “Burnt Offerings” (1976) and – much more recently – “The Eyes of My Mother” (2016).
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Ari Aster’s debut feature feels, in many ways, like a culmination of the art-horror renaissance ignited by the likes of Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and elaborated upon by Nicolas Pesce’s The Eyes of My Mother and Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy .
Director of photography Zach Kuperstein (“The Eyes of My Mother”) gives the flashback an additional edge, shooting Brake from behind with a wide angle lens.
Adapted for the screen by Paulo Campos and directed by Antonio Campos (whose works as a producer include The Eyes of my Mother and Martha Marcy May Marlene ), The Devil All the Time is beautifully executed and very disturbing.