Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

The Eyes of My Mother Blu-ray Movie Review

Blind-Sided

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 6, 2017

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.

Eyes cannot be discussed without minor spoilers. Readers take heed.

On an isolated farm, Francisca lives with her mother (Diana Agostini), a Portuguese immigrant who used to be a surgeon, and her American Gothic father (Paul Nazak), who barely says a word. (How this unlikely couple ended up together in splendid isolation is one of the film's many unexplored riddles.) Francisca is played as a little girl by Olivia Bond, and as a young adult by Kika Magalhães. Her world is altered by that hoariest of thriller devices, a serial killer. He is identified in the credits as "Charlie" (Will Brill, Not Fade Away) and, in what is supposed to be jolting twist, Charlie finds that he picked the wrong house. The sweetly innocent tot that he thought would be easy to terrorize reveals a far deadlier psychological architecture than anything Charlie has to offer. Rarely has a serial killer received such just desserts.

But that's only the beginning. As the years pass, Francisca does terrible things to a string of unfortunates, who, unlike Charlie, don't deserve what happens to them. Occasional snatches of dialogue suggest that the girl is driven by some warped notion of what her mother wants, but I doubt that even the omniscient shrink who wraps up Psycho could make sense of Francisca's inner world. Her psychology remains conveniently opaque, right up through the final frames. She isn't a character so much as a construct, an excuse for Pesce to appall the audience with the perversity of her actions. Since most of the injuries are inflicted offscreen, even viewers whose pulse quickens at depictions of graphic sadism are likely to be disappointed.

Pesce camouflages the script's emptiness by shooting in long, often static takes, generating more tedium than dread or suspense, and he has photographed the film in digital black-and-white that is apparently supposed to create atmosphere, except that the compositions aren't particularly expressive. Great cinematographers use the absence of color to focus on shapes and spatial relationships, generating drama out of geometry. In Eyes, the photography is just another gimmick crying "look at me!"

The Eyes of My Mother Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

The Eyes of My Mother Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

The Eyes of My Mother Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery (1080p; app. 1.66:1; 3:14): Some in color; some black-and-white.



• Interview with Director Nicholas Pesce (1080p; 1.78:1; 13:34): Informative and revealing.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:06).



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: Officer Downe, In Order of Disappearance, Detour, A Kind of Murder, The Charity Network, AXS TV.



• BD-Live.

The Eyes of My Mother Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.