Mother Nocturna (2024)

• AKA “Madre Notturna”
• Directed by Daniele Campea
• Written by Daniele Campea
• Stars Susanna Costaglione, Sofia Ponente, Edoardo Oliva
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6x_UzmoQtE

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This starts out slow, quiet, and gloomy. Then it gets more so. The acting and production values are all very good. It’s just a script that doesn’t go places. It wallows in misery. There are some horror elements that give it some interesting moments, but we didn’t much care for it.

Spoilery Synopsis

A woman dances as the credits roll. We cut to a hospital, where Agnese is getting released after thirteen years. Her husband, Riccardo, talks to the doctor, and he says Agnese is recovering, and he’s optimistic after thirteen years of treatment, but they don’t know what the problem is. The conversation shifts to Riccardo’s daughter, Arianna, who is graduating this year. They all go home together.

Agnese asks Arianna if she still dances; Agnese is a wolf biologist. The mother and daughter go out to the woods and look at wolf tracks. Agnese puts up trail cameras to watch the wolves. At school, Mateo asks Arianna out on a date, and she avoids answering him. After a while, Riccardo has to leave to make a house call; he’s a doctor and has to go.

Agnese spends her day looking at old bones in the field before watching videos of the wolves. A lone wolf comes to her door, and she smiles, but then it’s gone. Riccardo is surprised to her about that, since there haven’t been any wolves around in ages. She’s clearly suffering from depression, and he knows it and tries to cheer her up.

We hear about COVID lockdowns on the news; the lockdowns are getting started. At dinner, Agnese sees something in the room with them that terrifies her. Arianna’s not even sure she’s happy that her mother is home. “Are you sure it won’t happen again?” That night, Agnese wakes up and talks to the darkness until Riccardo sends her back to bed. In the morning, she notices her feet are dirty. Did she sleepwalk outdoors?

Riccardo goes to work again, leaving Arianna alone with Agnes, who talks about her favorite depressing opera. Arianna gets a phone call; Riccardo has tested positive for COVID and can’t come home. By morning, they hear that he’s been intubated and is not doing well.

Agnese mentions dreaming she was out in the woods, becoming something else, and Arianna points out that she was sleepwalking last night. Could it be her medication making her do that? We flash back to Arianna and Riccardo having a conversation about her first period.

Agnese looks at Leonardo’s pictures and says he was the light of the house. She cries, and Arianna looks annoyed. Little Leonardo’s death is what got her spiraling into depression.

Agnese falls down and has a seizure; she sees the woods. That night, Arianna dreams about being outside with the wolves as well. Caring for her mentally ill mother starts taking its toll on Arianna. She listens to old tapes from her father; Agnese had started sleepwalking right after Leonoardo died, and the depression soon followed. A suicide attempt was next, and he had no choice but to put Anese in the hospital for everyone’s safety.

That night Agnese slips out and heads for the woods again. Oddly enough, so does Arianna, who sees someone covered in blood coming out of the darkness toward her. In the morning, they both wash the dirt off their feet. Agnese eats some raw meat out of the fridge, tearing it apart with her teeth.

Arianna asks how Leonardo died; she doesn’t believe the story that he died in his sleep, and now she wants to know the truth. Agnese tells the story about how she was sleeping with the baby and she had those “walking in the woods” dreams. She saw a young man wearing wolf skins. When she woke up, Leonardo was on the floor next to her, dead. They said the baby had rolled out of bed, and Riccardo blamed her. She says guilt from Riccardo was what drove her mad, but Arianna remembers it differently. Agnese explains that Riccardo had been cheating on her for years, and Arianna doesn’t know him as well as she thinks she does. Arianna denies it, but Agnese has real proof– letters and photos. This soon devolves into Agnese throwing a fit.

Agnese dreams of a tall, blonde woman out in the woods. Arianna looks outside to see her mother bent over a dead rabbit, eating it. Agnese looks up and has black eyes, and Arianna climbs a tree to get away from her. Agnes then pushes the tree down and then sniffs Arianna all over. A wolf howls, and Agnes is gone.

We get a flashback of much-younger Arianna coming into her mother’s bedroom and killing little Leonardo as her mother sleeps. Arianna killed the baby and let her mother take the blame.

Brian’s Commentary

For a while, early on, it gave off hints that it was going to be a werewolf movie; we wish we were that lucky.

It’s extremely slow, atmospheric, and moody. For the first hour, the only real action is the occasional shots of Arianna dancing, and those don’t really have any relevance to the plot. We’re just past the one-hour point before we get any hint that this might be a horror movie.

It’s dark and depressing, well-shot, and looks good throughout. It’s good at showing the stress of dealing with someone who has mental illness and family tragedy, but there’s really very little actual story here. Even the reveal at the end about Leonardo’s death was not surprising or particularly impactful.

Nope. Didn’t like it at all.

Kevin’s Commentary

This had some moments that I enjoyed, and I thought the wrap-up was interesting. But mostly, it felt like a long, depressing slog. I didn’t much care for it.