Horror is a genre that’s almost brutally self-contained. This is a fact that studios have taken advantage of for years now. Armed with the knowledge that anything labeled horror will get asses into seats for at least opening weekend, poorly conceived movies are easy to make cheaply and still guarantee a profitable return.
This has resulted in a trend of watering down the genre—PG-13 releases carry the promise of even higher returns, forcing films to make compromises with itself and the genre. On top of that, it creates a formulaic standard that’s adhered to almost religiously, leading to an avalanche of films that are, at best, only marginally distinct from one another.
Nicolas Pesce is having none of that. His debut film, The Eyes of My Mother, was a surprise hit this year at Sundance, leading to more and more festival appearances throughout the year and, finally, a limited theatrical run and VOD presence beginning, December 2. (Our review.) A truly unnerving, terrifying film, The Eyes of My Mother is an uncompromising portrayal of madness that serves as a bold mission statement for its young writer/director.
I had the chance to speak with Pesce over the phone to discuss his film and the state of horror today, as well as the coming responsibility of genre films in troubled times. His excitement for not only his film but for his genre is apparent, and his thoughts about what horror is and can be offer an exciting insight into the possible future of independent horror films and, perhaps, the future of the genre.
After being on the festival circuit most of this year, how does it feel to finally get the chance to introduce The Eyes of My Mother to a wider audience?
It’s great. I’m very curious to see how it goes. You know I think that it’s been amazing on the festival circuit, seeing the response of different audiences—whether it’s a horror audience or an art film audience—and we’ve been getting a pretty warm reception so far and I hope that it continues. I’m excited to see the response from a wider audience and see more and more weirdos come out of the woodwork for me.
Do you think there’s going to be a lot of cross genre audiences or is it going to be more niche?
If you asked me months ago I would’ve said “No, no one who went to go see Don’t Breathe is gonna go see this.” But I don’t know anymore. What’s kind of exciting to see is movies that I would’ve thought only I would’ve liked, normal people like [them] too. I think that we’re seeing a resurgence in a more interesting horror film. There’s the audience that I made this movie for, who like a very particular type of movie, and I think that there’s also, hopefully, going to be an audience that doesn’t quite know what they’re getting themselves into and that they [might] not have gone to see it if they knew what it was but that they come out of the other end liking it. Hopefully there is a more broad audience that takes to the film.
I’m glad you touched on this because it’s been an interesting year in horror. There’s been this resurgence in the visceral, arty, slow burn movies like with The Witch or Darling or I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. The flipside to that of course is the more mainstream work such as Don’t Breathe, like you said, and then the fact that it doesn’t seem like found footage is ever going to die. Still, it certainly seems like we’re entering a new age for horror.
[laughs] Yeah, and it’s not to disparage a movie like Don’t Breathe either, because I think that the beauty of horror is that we kind of are down with anything. I think that what it’s showing is that horror fans are smart. The people who like horror are, I think, the most predisposed to liking a movie that’s abstract or weird or more indie. A lot of us came up watching crap films and found charm in things like that. We’re a very welcoming audience, and I think that it was just a matter of time before we figured out how to reach all those people.
VOD and Netflix have totally changed the game. There’s hopefully some kid in Ohio who reads some blog that mentions this movie and then is going to go watch it on iTunes. Ten, even five, years ago that wasn’t case. The niche audience that we used to think was so niche, I don’t think is as small as we thought it was. Now it’s just about connecting with everyone, finding the way to those people who will like it and who will love and be grateful that it exists. I can’t tell you how many weird movies that I found that changed my life and it was because of the internet. I think that’s a lot of what’s changing the game now.
In other interviews you discussed how you sort of came to horror during or even after film school, as an adult. Do you think that changed the way you approached the genre?
Totally! I grew up watching the gothic stuff, the Vincent Price shit that I always talk about. That was like a different sort of energy. I was a kid when The Ring and all that stuff was coming out and I couldn’t bear to watch that. That seemed way too scary to me. Going back to that stuff as an adult, I think I was way more objective about it. I had at that point seen all the Japanese versions of every one of our remakes and was looking at things from the filmmaking side of it and seeing really exciting things that I could do and a way to kind of mix all my interests into one thing.
I think, and I’m sure this is the case for a lot of kids who go to film school, you go in there loving what you love and you watch everything. Then you leave being like “Well I’ve seen everything,” but you’ve seen a very particular section of filmmaking. I went to NYU and there was no talk of horror films. No one talked about genre stuff. Tarkovsky’s Solaris is the closest we’d get to genre. It was finally another world of movies that I hadn’t tapped out of, and as an adult, with a deeper knowledge of film, I could rediscover all these things. Takashi Miike is one of my favorite directors and I discovered him as an adult. I think who I am as a filmmaker now is far more nuanced because of my weird journey through horror. At this point, I’ve seen everything, so I’ve tapped that out too [laughs].
Also, I’m a fanboy of, like, everything. Comic books, horror movies, and now we also live in this world with companies like Shout Factory and Alamo that are putting out these really old, obscure movies. There’s access to things that I wasn’t alive [for] when they came out and were only on late night TV and now there’s a deeper education into all the genre stuff that we can give ourselves because fans are making that stuff accessible.
Do you think that you’re going to take your eye and your vision into new genres or are you going to stick with horror?
There’s a lot of different sections of all of these genres. I definitely see myself sticking in the realm of horror, sci-fi, thriller; sort of darker material. But I think that what I’m interested in is kind of the nooks and crannies of the genre that you don’t know how to explain and starting to find things that you don’t have as clear cut a genre definition for.
So we’re living in a time when a lot of people are terrified of reality and there’s a lot of fear going on—
Yeah [laughs]
How do you think horror can address this? Might horror become remarginalized in a way because people are so sick of being scared in reality?
You know, I honestly think that it’s the opposite. I feel like this sort of stuff flourishes…like you look at Dawn of the Dead, it wouldn’t exist if racism wasn’t around in the 60s. Horror and all the genres, sci-fi used to do this even more so, genre film used to serve this greater societal purpose of making commentary on what’s going on. You look at Cronenberg’s work and you look at 2001, anything, it’s like there’s a commentary doesn’t happen as much in genre films [anymore]. I think that in times of unrest, it’s like we got punk music and slashers in the 70s. I live in New York, and our way of combating angst is being loud and breaking shit. It’s going to breed an exciting period with people, if anything, being okay [with] and wanting to see something rawer and more real. Shit like The Purge is more real than ever now. in times of societal woe, we get really amazing things out of art. It’s a silver lining to a big cloud of shit.
I’m curious about your writing process, specifically with Francisca. Did you do a lot of research to get her psychology right? How’d you approach that?
As morbid as this sounds, I have a morbid curiosity about serial killers. I’m so fascinated by these people that do things that are crazier than the stuff in the movies. I’ve never known anyone who could do stuff like that and I could never do stuff like that. The craziest thing you could do is kill someone. The fact that there’s people who do it a lot is insane. I was very interested before I did this film in the psychology of these sorts of people. I always say if I didn’t go into film I would’ve been an FBI profiler.
Jeffrey Dahmer is a guy who killed and ate 17 people, but he didn’t spend all of his time killing and eating 17 people. There’s all this in between time between his crimes, years at times. What did he do during that time? What does a person who kills and eats people do when they’re bored? There’s all these very ordinary, banal questions that you can start to ask yourself about people who do things that are larger than life. There’s no concrete, one easy way of explaining why someone is the way they are. What was interesting about this movie was exploring those quiet moments in Francisca’s life and how the big traumatic ones are just as affecting as the quiet ones too. It’s a summation of all the parts that makes a person who they are and not just any one thing.
What really makes her, specifically, and the movie, generally, so unnerving is the fact that we pity her. It’s almost scarier because we empathize with her so much.
Yeah, I think it’s a tricky dance. There’s a very delicate line between sympathy and fear. The more you know someone, in movies and outside of movies, the harder it is to think they’re a monster. We worked hard to get you so deep into her world that you don’t know how to feel and it’s confusing. And yeah, it’s scary to sympathize with someone that you’re afraid of, and being able to constantly toggle back and forth through those things was something that we were constantly tracking.
With all that in mind, where do you think Francisca stands in the pantheon of cinematic horror villains?
[laughs] That’s a good question. There’s a surprising lack of women in that list. I love Miike’s Audition, and Francisca is kind of like my take on Asami. A girl who everything was for good intentions but she was brutally misguided and treated terribly as a child and kind of what happens after loss and neglect. Francisca is my version of that. Where she sits in the pantheon of serial killers? I dunno. Somewhere between Asami and Aileen Wuornos.
The Eyes of My Mother opens December 2, in limited release. Also available on iTunes, Amazon Video, and On Demand.
Read our interview with The Eyes of My Mother star Kika Magalhaes here.
