Happy Halloween! Let's celebrate with a look at one of the year's most exciting horror films. For his feature film debut, director Nicolas Pesce transports you to a black-and-white, hellish landscape of murder and mommy issues with The Eyes of My Mother. The film follows a young woman named Francesca (Kika Magalhaes), who discovers an untold darkness and despair in herself after her mother's brutal murder.

I caught The Eyes of My Mother at Fantastic Fest last month and was quite taken with it, flagging it as one of the upcoming horror movies you should make a note of. Pesce demonstrates a confident hand in his feature film debut, crafting an intimate, deeply unsettling portrait of violent madness and backroads loneliness. And despite being completely deranged, the film is beautiful to boot with an equally impressive debut from cinematographer Zach Kupperstein. The first trailer made excellent work of showcasing The Eyes of My Mother's impressive visuals, the new trailer does a better job of capturing the film's slow-burn dread and nightmarish mood.

The Eyes of My Mother arrives in theaters and on VOD December 2nd. Check out the new trailer below.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Eyes of My Mother:

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 shatters the idyll of Francisca’s family life, deeply traumatizing the young girl, but also awakening unique curiosities. Though she clings to her increasingly reticent father, Francisca’s loneliness and scarred nature converge years later when her longing to connect with the world around her takes on a dark form.

 

Shot in crisp black and white, the haunting visual compositions evoke its protagonist’s isolation and illuminate her deeply unbalanced worldview. Genre-inflected, but so strikingly unique as to defy categorization, writer/director Nicolas Pesce’s feature debut allows only an elliptical presence in Francisca’s world, guiding our imaginations to follow her into peculiar, secret places.