The Eyes of My Mother (2016)

There is generally nothing wrong with an art house horror movie.  I’m always game, whether it be something as bizarre as Eraserhead, as creepy as The VVItch or possibly as forgotten as Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, I’m always on board for the unpredictable nature of indie horror . . .

. . . but is has to be functional enough for the viewer to get their feel into.  That a problem for The Eyes of My Mother, a tempest in a teapot about a young girl named Francisca (Olivia Bond) whose home is a rural farm where she is being raised by a distant father (Paul Nazak) and a mother (Diana Agostini) who once worked as an eye surgeon in Portugal, an irony that this movie wallows in to the point of exhaustion.

The mother is murdered and Francisca and her father take revenge on the killer (Will Brill), a drifter with an obnoxious laugh, tie him up in their barn and go to work removing his eyes.  This damaging bit of parent-child bonding causes Francisca to grow up to be a bit of a sociopath.  Years later we meet up with her and she is stark staring mad and what follows is a weird chain of chopping and stabbing and eyeball plucking that would make sense if we had a sensible character to follow.

Writer-director Nicholas Pesce has created a film with a pretty intense look and feel but his story is repugnant.  It’s the kind of story that one might hear about on one of those specials about infamous serial killers, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to see a movie about it.  Pesce is a good filmmaker but you’ll wish for a much better film next time.