6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
In their secluded farmhouse, a mother, formerly a surgeon in Portugal, teaches her daughter, Francisca, to understand anatomy and be unfazed by death. One afternoon, a mysterious visitor horrifyingly shatters the idyll of Francisca’s family life. Francisca’s loneliness and scarred nature converge years later when her longing to connect with the world takes on a distinctly dark form.
Starring: Kika Magalhaes, Will Brill, Flora Diaz, Paul Nazak, Clara WongHorror | 100% |
Psychological thriller | 14% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English & Portuguese
English, English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
The Eyes of My Mother is the feature debut of writer/director Nicholas Pesce, and it wears its cinematic ambitions on its digital sleeve. A self-confessed horror devotee, Pesce aspires to both genre credibility and arthouse cachet. It's entirely predictable when, in the extras on this Blu-ray disc, he trots out the word "transgressive", which is like waving a banner that says: "Isn't my film outrageous?" Eyes isn't outrageous, and it isn't even that interesting. At just 76 minutes, it's such a tough slog to sit through that you can't help letting your mind wander, questioning the plot's many improbabilities and distancing yourself from Pesce's strenuous efforts to shock.
The Eyes of My Mother was shot digitially (on the Red Epic Dragon, according to IMDb) by cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, making his feature debut. Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray exhibits the usual virtues of digital capture, with a clean, sharp, detailed image and an absence of noise, interference or other artifacts. The black-and-white grading, which was presumably accomplished in post-production, delivers solid blacks and clearly delineated shades of gray, but the image never achieves any notable texture or depth. This does not appear to be a fault of the Blu-ray presentation, which was presumably sourced by a direct digital path from the film's digital intermediate. Black-and-white cinematography is a demanding sub-genre with which contemporary filmmakers have little or no experience. It's not something you can just switch on or off in post (which is why, for example, George Miller's Black & Chrome edition of Mad Max: Fury Road was a major undertaking for Miller and his colorist). Magnolia has mastered Eyes at an average bitrate of 27 Mbps, which is generous for a digitally originated project, especially one with so few cuts and so many static shots.
Eyes has a 5.1 soundtrack encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. It is listed as an English-language
track, but significant dialogue is spoken in Portuguese by both Francisca and her mother. The
Portuguese exchanges are translated by non-switchable English subtitles printed in yellow (see
screenshots 11 and 14). The optional English SDH titles appear in white.
The film's sound design is minimalist, consistent with the director's spare aesthetic. Rear-channel effects are used to signal activity off-screen and, more
generally, to fill out the sonic
environment of the isolated setting, but the bulk of the mix is front-oriented. The occasional
bursts of moody, synth-generated score were composed by Ariel Loh, who like the director and
cinematographer, is making his feature debut.
Psycho aptly captured the vertiginous sensation of meeting a seemingly normal person, only to
find yourself dropping through a trap door into a distorted world of cruelty and perversion.
Filmmakers have been trying to re-create Hitchcock's achievement ever since, with varying
degrees of success. Pesce's film falls near the bottom of the heap, and it's oddly disorienting to
hear him repeatedly invoke The Night of the Hunter
as his model, because that classic had
everything Eyes lacks, including a charismatic villain with an understandable purpose and a
credible environment in which the villain pursued his evil machinations. Eyes has neither. It's torture
porn without the torture, and the viewer is the one who suffers. Not recommended.
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1980