¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

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.)

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[6 of 13]

GEUNG SI
(RIGOR MORTIS)

(August 2013)

Juno Mak's feature debut is an impressive feat: it’s a phantasmagorical tour of Chinese superstition and religion that’s also a loving (and semi-meta) homage to the Jiangshi films of the ‘80’s.

And it pays this rather noteworthy tribute by stripping away the comedic wackiness of the original Jiangshi films and delivering an atmospheric tale of blood and shadows and death.

Co-produced by Ju-on mastermind, Shimizu Takashi, Geung Si manages to rope in even a non-Jiangshi film fan like myself (those who know me well know that the wacky schtick is so not my thing) with the aforementioned phantasmagoria and atmosphere and the straight-faced, straightforward approach to the narrative.

The fact that I was not a particular fan of Jiangshi also meant that the meta leanings of Geung Si pretty much flew right over my head, but even missing out on that aspect during my first viewing did not diminish my amazement at the film.

Playing out like a wild and creepy mash-up of Asian horror and wuxia, I highly recommend this, especially for those KADASIG readers who’ve ever wondered what a film adaptation would look like.

For my money, it would look something like Geung Si…

(Geung Si/Rigor Mortis OS’ and Character Poster courtesy of thedailyzombies.com.)

¡Qué horror! 2014

Candidate #7

GEUNG SI
(RIGOR MORTIS)

(August 2013)

Juno Mak's feature debut is an impressive feat: it’s a phantasmagorical tour of Chinese superstition and religion that’s also a loving (and semi-meta) homage to the Jiangshi films of the ‘80’s.

And it pays this rather noteworthy tribute by stripping away the comedic wackiness of the original Jiangshi films and delivering an atmospheric tale of blood and shadows and death.

Co-produced by Ju-on mastermind, Shimizu Takashi, Geung Si manages to rope in even a non-Jiangshi film fan like myself (those who know me well know that the wacky schtick is so not my thing) with the aforementioned phantasmagoria and atmosphere and the straight-faced, straightforward approach to the narrative.

The fact that I was not a particular fan of Jiangshi also meant that the meta leanings of Geung Si pretty much flew right over my head, but even missing out on that aspect during my first viewing did not diminish my amazement at the film.

Playing out like a wild and creepy mash-up of Asian horror and wuxia, I highly recommend this, especially for those KADASIG readers who’ve ever wondered what a film adaptation would look like.

For my money, it would look something like Geung Si…

(Geung Si/Rigor Mortis OS’ and Character Poster courtesy of thedailyzombies.com.)

WICKED LITTLE THINGS (Review)

In an effort to bring public awareness to eight independent horror productions by christening them with a brand name, After Dark Films spearheaded the After Dark Horrorfest (“8 Films To Die For”) in November of last year, a mini-festival which included in its slate, Takashi Shimizu’s Rinne (Reincarnation).
Now, I got to see Rinne last year, before it had been chosen for the Horrorfest, and I wasn’t too crazy about it. If Rinne was indicative of the rest of the Horrorfest titles, then in all probability, I wouldn’t be too happy with them either.
Still, I figured, what the frack. I should give the other films a fair shake. So I checked out J.S. Cardone’s Wicked Little Things.

Recently widowed Karen Tunny (Lori Heuring, a frequent Cardone collaborator, having appeared in his past films, True Blue and the straight-to-DVD sequel 8MM 2) and her two daughters, Sarah (Scout Taylor-Compton, who plays Laurie Strode in Rob Zombie’s upcoming Halloween redux*) and Emma (Chloe Moretz, who was in The Amityville Horror remake and is in the upcoming English-language re-do of The Eye), move into a dilapidated house up in the mountains, left to Karen by her late husband.
No time is wasted before Emma finds a new, apparently imaginary friend named Mary, and Sarah is informed by the local teens that there are zombie children who roam the woods at night. Yesiree, Bob, it seems a mining accident trapped a number of children, burying them alive, and now they wander restlessly, seeking justice for their untimely deaths.
Riiiight.

If the people-moving-into-an-old-rundown-house-where-weird-sh!t-happens scenario sounds familiar, it should. It’s an ancient genre formula, and the least Cardone and writers (Jace Anderson, Adam Gierasch, and Ben Nedivi) could have done was a) make things lively, and b) give us interesting characters we could care for.
They do neither.
There is absolutely nothing here to recommend. It boggles the mind that Ben Cross (who starred in Oscar winner Chariots of Fire and Bernard Rose’s brilliant Paperhouse) is slumming here as Hanks, the requisite mysterious hermit figure who knows a secret or two about the sinister goings-on.

This is about as flat, dull, and uninteresting as they come, with stock characters who devolve into noisy hysterics when the chips are down.
Considering I wasn’t impressed by Cardone’s previous horror film, The Forsaken, and The Covenant—which he wrote—was just plain godawful, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised Wicked Little Things turned out the way it did.
What can I say? Hope springs eternal for the die hard horror fan, and I thought maybe this would be the film that would turn my opinion of Cardone around.
Maybe next time, J.S.

Parting shot: I’ll try not to hold my less than enthusiastic responses to Shimizu’s Rinne and Cardone’s Wicked Little Things against the other After Dark Horrorfest films…
In fact, I’ll even try to overlook the fact that After Dark Films is headed by Courtney Solomon, who inflicted us with the astoundingly horrible Dungeons & Dragons feature, and the forgettable An American Haunting. (Not only is Solomon apparently a lousy director, he also got into hot water recently for the Captivity marketing campaign.)

* It would be wise to keep in mind that Laurie Strode was the role which made Jamie Lee Curtis’ career.