THE EYES OF MY MOTHER – Claustrophobic monochrome nightmare that plays with genre tropes before taking them somewhere else and smothering them, slowly... It's about a disturbed young woman who grows up on a farm and finds that, in the end, she only has her 'pets' for company. Although there are shades of genre mainstays spanning rural backwater horror through to 'torture porn', TEOMM takes a chilly, arthouse approach to its dissection of twisted development. Some of it could be described as a hard watch, but, like TCM, the brutality is largely 'emotional' rather than graphic / literal, and this is tempered with a relentless melancholy that sits at odds with the way this kind of thing is usually executed. The atmosphere of isolation and desperation is really strong, aided and abetted by the stark cinematography... long shots of figures struggling in the hills conjure an air of lingering dread. It's been compared with 'Audition' in some quarters, and that's the closest parallel I can draw without leaving the genre or coming up with something faintly ridiculous like “Bergman does Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”. Highly recommended, and, although it'll probably fall victim to hype somewhere along the line, possibly the best thing I've seen in the last couple of years.
THE SAMURAI – Dark, dreamy number about a small town cop and his nemesis, an enigmatic sword wielding transvestite. 'Samurai' is really good, and I'm surprised at myself for not checking it out before now. Like the above, it stays within the horror genre to a degree, but the real meat is its drifty excursion into freeform nightmare impressionism. Atmospheric to the max, its vision of suburbs rent asunder by forces from the flip-side of consciousness is hugely evocative, and the central figure in his white dress made me think somehow of Franco / Rollinesque imagery. A bit of a lazy comparison, because 'The Samurai' is pretty unique and, yes, you should definitely see it.
THE HOUSE ON PINE STREET – Fed up with all those sub-multiplex DTV jump scare horrors with their indentikit DVD covers? Me too, but I tuned into THOPS on the basis that I was promised more than just a few sudden edits accompanied by loud noise cues. Was I short changed? No, THOPS is pretty excellent, and for once builds its haunted house schtick slowly from the ground up, layering atmosphere on atmosphere. This really works, and delivers a palpable sense of unease tipping into dread as we follow a resentfully pregnant city slicker dislocated and adrift in a suburban house full of bad vibes. To say that's it's quite long, you don't feel it, which is impressive in itself considering the tired format. But that's the key to THOPS – the familiarity of the material grounds the ominous feeling. There are only a couple of fumbles along the way, usually when it drops the subtlety and goes overt, once or twice in the form of ill advised CGI. Mostly really strong though, and very much recommended.
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