7) The Eyes Of My Mother (dir. Nicolas Pesce)
2016 was a big year for debut features, one such film being Nicolas Pesce’s The Eyes Of My Mother. It’s not straight-forward horror though, as there aren’t any slashers or creatures. Much like The Witch, Pesce challenges how people conceive horror, and does so through black-and-white, arthouse means. This is the story of a little girl whose innocence is unfairly robbed, and how one devastating act changes her life.
The child grows up to be a lonely girl played by Kika Magalhaes, so torn by one cataclysmic event that she never recovers. We see how her maturation has been warped, and we watch as Magalhaes calmly portrays a disturbed individual. Her performance is nothing short of nightmarish and spectacular, tainted by an evil that burrows inside her. Slow-burn intensity paints a macabre picture of personal imprisonment, as Pesce finds fear in wasted life, misguided youth and desensitization to the most depraved aspects of existence. If that’s not horror, I don’t know what is.