Nicolas Pesces black-and-white tapestry of grief, murder, and graphic torture is exquisitely terrifying.
However, the ghosts that linger in Franciscas disturbingly stainless white walls are the wraiths of inconceivable crimes.
There are no fairy stories here.
Something monstrous and irreversible is set off in Francisca.
When her father dies of something unexplained, the specter of loneliness sets off an unutterable griefand homicidal urges.
Ad content continues below
Nicolas Pesces directorial debut is startling in its simplicity.
The spaces between are forbidding, frozen, waiting to crack into a million spiderwebs.
The silence in itself is a phantom.
It roars in your ears with a throbbing doom and impermeable sadness impossible to ignore.
There always seems to be something that is being whispered beyond hearing.
It is a hard but fragile quality just on the edge of tangible.
She is ice, but shatter-thin, translucent ice whose frailty hides a razor edge.
Kiki Magalhaes brutal but delicate performance verges on tragic despite the specter of unforgivable sin.
She is a killer ballerina, at once ethereal and dangerous.
Horror films often portray psychopaths as masks of irrationally laughing insanity, but Francisca is cast in bone china.
She could just as easily be delivered or damned.
The absence of chainsaws and disembodied limbs, and full-frontal gore only amplifies the carnage.
The purity and remorselessness of Francescas gaze will freeze your blood.
The Eyes of My Motherweeps caustic tears of a past murdered and mourned.
It is beautifully disconcerting in the rawness of death and the torrent of uncensored emotions it can unleash.
