Movies
Two Eyes Staring (Zwart water) (Netherlands)
“‘Two Eyes Staring’ is basically Horror 101, with van Strien practically running down a list of horror clichés after a great first act, completely blowing everything the film had going for it.”
Horror isn’t exactly a burgeoning genre in Belgium and if someone were to make a generalization about the country based on Two Eyes Staring, it would probably be that horror flicks in general must not make it to their shore often enough. It’s that lack of awareness that director Elbert van Strien must be hoping for; he understands some basic mechanics, like how good cinematography and an eerie score can build up mood, but the script – which he co-wrote Paulo van Vliet – constantly sabotages the on-screen tension by veering off into inconsequential territory that makes the film drag.
When nine-year-old Lisa’s (Isabelle Stokkel) maternal grandmother passes away, her mother and father move her into their newly inherited home in Belguim. Her parents quickly land new jobs, but Lisa’s bored and agitated by the move, which doesn’t help the already rocky relationship she has with her mother. Spending more and more time alone in the giant house, she befriends a mischievous spirit that temporarily alleviates her boredom. Her parents dismiss her new companion as an imaginary playmate but, as the family will soon find out, she seems to know a lot about her mother’s secret twin sister and less than happy childhood. Tensions grow in the house as more and more discoveries are made, dividing the family as Lisa becomes destructive and her mother withdrawn.
Guido van Gennep’s cinematography captures every dark, shadowy corner of the home, giving Two Eyes Staring the look of older haunted house films where things constantly go bump in the night. But even when coupled with Stokkel’s great debut performance which drives the film forward, the film is too reliant on the audience thinking kids are creepy from the get-go. It doesn’t do a lot to instill that fear into non-paedophobia sufferers and in general, it isn’t doing much of anything.
With a great first act, Two Eyes Staring devolved into yet another film where a character’s past comes back to haunt them – literally – but none of them are very interesting and it’s far longer than it should be. While Lisa’s point of view is that her parents spend way too much time at work and absorbed in their own lives, the film does the same which brings it to a screeching halt more often than it should.
Han Otten and Maurits Overdulve’s score does some screeching of its own, completely shattering the mood more than once.
Two Eyes Staring is basically Horror 101, with van Strien practically running down a list of horror clichés after a great first act, completely blowing everything the film had going for it. The cinematography and acting keep it from being downright terrible, but not from being dull and 30 minutes longer than it needs to be.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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