Friday, February 1, 2019


¡QUÉ HORROR2019
Candidate #11

PIERCING
(January 2018)


"The victim has to be a prostitute, but what type? And she has to speak English. The terror must be in English.”

Reed (It Comes at Night’s Christopher Abbott) is a man up to no good.
His meticulously murderous plans (which involve rope, chloroform, and an icepick) go soaring out the window though when he meets Jackie (Mia Wasikowska).
That’s the basic set-up of Piercing, the sophomore feature of Nicolas Pesce, on the heels of his audacious and disturbing debut, The Eyes of My Mother.
Pesce adapts the script from the novel Piasshingu by Murakami Ryū, the man also responsible for bringing us Ōdishon, upon which Miike Takashi’s Audition is based.
Let’s let that sink in for a moment, shall we?

“Look at your face… the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen, I just want to hit you. Not just like a little slap on the cheek, I want to punch you with my fist as hard as I can.”

Now, having established Piercing’s pedigree, I should make it clear at the offset that it is not as viscerally unsettling as The Eyes of My Mother, nor is it as shockingly violent as Audition (though it does have its twisted moments).
And while there are similarities between the narrative arcs of Piercing and Audition, Pesce’s adaptation is clearly its own kind of animal.

“Imagine me lying here and you looking down at me. And these sheets getting wet with all sorts of things.
“Just think about what that could be like.
“Think about it.”

Of particular note are the stylistic flourishes Pesce deploys, among them, transporting the action to an unspecified setting composed of a cityscape of miniatures, and utilizing some tracks from classic giallo, among them, Goblin cuts from Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso and Tenebre.
(Pesce himself has described Piercing as “… very much my take on a giallo film.”)
He also subverts the audience’s instinctive reactions to a pair of easy listening standards in two notable sequences in the film, juxtaposing the overly familiar music against a canny use of sound to evoke substantial levels of disquiet.

“I mean… odds say you should probably just kill her no matter what.”

So if all that sounds like your cup of red ant--and so long as you keep in mind that Piercing is not as extreme a horror title as either The Eyes of My Mother or Audition--then you’d do well to check this one out.

“You don’t have to be afraid.”



Parting Shot: I’ve never been a particular fan of the Ju-On films that I’ve seen, which have always struck me as far more interested in scares and shocks rather than character and plot.
The English-language remakes helmed by Ju-On creator Shimizu Takashi weren’t much of an improvement in that area either.
But with Pesce taking the reins on the Grudge reboot, I’m mighty curious to see what he brings to the table.

(Piercing OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)

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