Gothic horror is a relatively small genre in Japanese cinema, one possible reason being the country’s lack of crumbling Gothic-style castles and houses.
That has not stopped Takeshi Kushida, whose skin-crawling second feature, “My Mother’s Eyes,” imports gothic tropes into present-day Japan, right down to the shadowy old house where a Svengali-like eye doctor and his cadaverous adult son dwell.
The film, which premiered at this year’s Skip City International D-Cinema Festival and has since screened widely at festivals abroad, is less a shock-fest than an ornately atmospheric journey into two toxic parent-child relationships that nightmarishly intertwine.