Daniele Campea conjures up some striking visuals in Mother Nocturna and presents a unique and thought-provoking take on mental illness and family tragedy. However, the script’s bareness, handicaps the captivating performances, leaving you wanting more.

Agnese (Susanna Costaglione) is a wolf biologist who gets back to her husband and daughter after a lengthy hospitalization in a mental institution. The moon has an occult power over Agnese, whose mind begins to disrupt and her body transforms, while the visions of the “God of the woods” intrude on reality. She will deal with the ghosts from the past, locked in a house surrounded by woods, where nightmares take over and obscure presences become ever more disturbing.

Mother Nocturna is the slowest of psychological horror burns that almost wantonly wallows in its own misery, which for some will feel like one hell of a slog. Yet, if you give it a chance, there is an interesting take on the effects of a family tragedy on different generations. With Agnese, she delved into her fantasies of wolves to help her cope. Only for it to take too strong a hold of her and become all-encompassing. With Arianna, she becomes withdrawn, focusing on her dance, practising alone as if something wants to break out of her as she moves.

Susanna Costaglione delivers a particularly strong performance here. In a way, she is still grieving for her lost son, but no matter how deep into her research she goes, that haunting nightmare will not leave her. So, mentally she not only wants to be something else, she needs to be something more than a grieving mother, even after 13 years. Campea and Costaglione combine to give the audience quite an impactful look at mental illness.

This is accentuated by Sofia Ponente’s performance as the concerned and increasingly stressed Arianna. While Costaglione’s Agnese is the focus, the true focus and shining light of Mother Nocturna is Ponente’s Arriana. She is fantastic as she battles not only her own inner turmoil but also the stress of being the impromptu carer for someone who is severely mentally ill, which causes her own trauma to push through to the surface.

There is a fair chance you will not come across a film that seems to be as dimly lit on purpose as Mother Nocturna. Make no mistake, this isn’t a budget constraint Daniele Campea and cinematographer Federico Deidda have gone out of their way to present this film in this manner, Giving us some stunning compositions and setting the ominous tone as our characters are bathed even during the daytime in a cloud of darkness that feels as if it is inching further over the story. It shouldn’t work; it should be frustrating, but somehow it works at unnerving you; even normal conversations between characters in a vast hallway feel claustrophobic in nature. Ultimately, it is an inspired choice; after all, the light of the house in Leonardo is gone, so why shouldn’t the home, the woods, etc., have a shawl of darkness around it?

Hurting the film, however, is how free and near directionless it is. It was as if there was a rough idea of what the story should be and that they would work it out as they go on. This is mentioned because the opening half of Mother Nocturna is almost mind-numbingly slow. Yes, we are meant to get both sides of the struggle the two women are going through with Riccardo out of the house due to Covid isolation and treatment. But so little happens in that period to move the story on. The atmosphere and a sense of looming dread are building throughout, but not enough to keep the movie going and to have that pace, which is a shame as Campea does so much good work in giving us such interesting visuals and snippets of a fascinating story that you wish there was a bit more to sink your teeth into (as much as Agnese does later on).

While not an out and out werewolf horror film, there is more than enough here to enjoy and appreciate with Ponente becoming the star of the show. Mother Nocturna became a film that needed to step a bit more out of the shadows narratively to really strike a chord.

Mother Nocturna Rises on VOD This Fall. Available on Cable & Digital HD Across the United States and Canada September 27th Also Available on Prime & Apple TV in Italy and the UK.

★★★

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