¡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.)

reVIEW (15)
SUSPIRIA [1 of 2]

The long-anticipated culmination of Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy, La Terza Madre (Mother of Tears: The Third Mother), is nearly upon us. In light of that momentous horror geek occasion, I thought it appropriate to take a look back at the first two installments, 1977’s Suspiria, and 1980’s Inferno.
(It’s also the 30th anniversary of Suspiria, so here’s to the old gal…)

When Daria Nicolodi (who had appeared in Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso and subsequently became romantically involved with the director) suggested a move away from Argento’s beloved giallo, he took the advice to heart. Collaborating with Nicolodi on the script, Argento would end up creating one of his most enduring works, Suspiria.

New Yorker Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper; her more recent films include Todd Haynes’ Safe and Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report) has just arrived in Germany as a new student at the Tanz Akademie, a prominent European dance school. Her arrival at the Akademie in a violent rainstorm coincides with the hurried flight from the premises by third-year student Pat Hingle (Eva Axen), who is soon violently murdered in a horrific setpiece which ends in a devastating rain of glass.
What follows in the wake of this brutal event is a phantasmagorical journey to the dark heart of the mystery that lies in the depths of the Akademie, a journey chronicled in a film that has been described as both a “magical thriller” and a “fairy tale for adults.”
Thirty years after its release, the film’s elements which hold up the strongest are the visual style Argento and his cinematographer Luciano Tovoli adopted, and the disturbing musical score by Italian progressive rock band (and frequent Argento collaborators), Goblin.

In keeping with the adult fairy tale tone of the narrative, Suspiria is drenched with vibrant colours and boasts impressive sets (production design by Giuseppe Bassan, who had worked with Argento on Profondo Rosso, and would again on Inferno and Sotto Gli Occhi Dell’assassino), which bolster the “totally artificial style” the filmmakers were aiming for. Though also heavily influenced by German Expressionism, Argento points to one particular—and rather unlikely—film which was a source of inspiration for Suspiria’s look: Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
It was from this animated classic that Argento and Tovoli drew the rich and deep colours that made Suspiria look quite unlike any horror film that had come before it. (It was shot by Tovoli on the last of the IB Technicolor stock in Italy.)*

Meanwhile, to provide the “infernal atmosphere” needed for the film, Argento collaborated with Goblin, to produce one of the most unsettling scores in horror cinema.
Along with Jerry Goldsmith’s work on Richard Donner’s The Omen, the Goblin/Argento music is one of the most conspicuous and intrusive film scores in cinematic history.
It is also—again, like The Omen score—one of the creepiest soundtracks to ever assault the ears of this particular horror geek. African percussion, Greek string instruments, plastic cups, whispers of “Witch! Witch!” all collide in an aural storm of chaos and foreboding, as the film’s bizarre events unfold before the audience’s eyes.

Given Argento’s tendency to shrug off the conventions of narrative, Suspiria’s plot is not a particularly strong one, subsumed as it is by the dark fairy tale stylings of the piece. It is the sort of tale where the sound of footsteps carries over impossible distances, solely to allow Suzy to uncover the Akademie’s ultimate secret.
If you’re a stickler for story and plot, then Suspiria is not the film for you.
Additionally, Suspiria displays the marvels of postdubbing, a standard practice in Italian cinema, where all sound, including dialogue, is recorded after the film is complete. Thus, some of the English dubbing tends to distract. To further complicate matters, during filming, certain cast members spoke their English lines phonetically, while some didn’t even speak English at all. Thus, some of the performances are questionable in light of the curious on-set language barriers.
And a couple of bits that didn’t work way back in 1977 (you cannot help but note the strangely puppet-like nature of German wildlife) still don’t work today. My sincerest apologies, Signore Argento, but that sadly overweight bat did indeed contribute to the “totally artificial style” of the film, but in a particularly dreadful way.

Still, there is that look, and that score, and Harper is an excellent protagonist (praised by horror writer and unabashed Argento fan, Douglas E. Winter as “the best of Argento’s heroines”). She is the audience’s Alice, simultaneously wonder- and terror-struck, by the Akademie’s sinister mystery, thrust into this shadowed land and left to work her way to the beating heart of it, before she can find surcease and escape.
With the look, rhythm, and logic of a particularly disturbing nightmare, Suspiria may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it’s certainly a must-see, as one of the most visually stimulating horror films ever made.

* Tovoli would collaborate once again with Argento on Sotto Gli Occhi Dell’assassino.
He was also the cinematographer on five consecutive Barbet Schroeder films (the brilliant Reversal of Fortune, the not-so-brilliant Single White Female, Kiss of Death, Before and After, and Desperate Measures).
More recently, he’s shot Julie Taymor’s interesting and kick-a$$ Titus and reunited with Schroeder on the dismal Murder By Numbers.

Parting shot: If you haven’t seen Suspiria yet, check it out, if only to see a really young Udo Kier as Dr. Frank Mandel, who helps provide much of the film’s exposition. Sadly though, he’s in only one scene.

(Suspiria OS courtesy of impawards.com—this particular OS came alongside a truly horrible trailer that had a sophomoric nursery rhyme on VO, a patently fake skeleton with a wig on, and a font whose letters were made to resemble distorted hearts. In the trailer, the letters actually beat; VHS cover art courtesy of amazon.com; DVD cover art courtesy of itsonlyamovie.co.uk.)

Thanx once again to the J&R Travel Agency for getting me that plane ticket to Germany.

SPIDER-MAN 3
(Review)

Let’s kick off with a scorecard, shall we?
I loved Spider-Man. I thought it was a thematically cohesive film that made good use of the superhero origin cinematic template (where roughly the first half of the film depicts the main character growing into his heroic role, without the primary colour swirl of his trademark costume), allowing us to witness the life of Peter Parker, come to care for him, and thus, make us willing to take the journey of discovery with him.
I did not love Spider-Man 2. Though it arguably had a more human antagonist in Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus, I thought the script was overly burdened by plot contrivances and was manipulative of the audience. And the over-dependence on CGI that was nowhere near flawless was a major sticking point as well.
All this was conveniently brought back to me in the wake of the images that accompany the third installment’s opening credits.
And what do I think of Spider-Man 3?
Let’s see…

To put a bullet in the back of the suspense’s head, I actually like it more than Spider-Man 2. But, like the beleaguered Peter Parker, it’s got a lot of problems.
Big problems.
I wish it were as simple as saying, “Well, if they’d just dropped a villain or two here, shaved off a subplot there, then maybe the movie would have been better.”
It isn’t, though. Not really.

The thing is, given what they were attempting to do, the story Sam Raimi set out to tell, I can see the roles each villain had to play.
Let’s take a look at Harry first (or, as the end credits so unimaginatively dub him, the “New Goblin”).
Harry is the most important villain of the piece, I don’t think that’s even in question. He is Parker’s best friend, we’ve watched his character arc over the Spider-Man films as he progressively became the obsessed, revenge-driven son, and perhaps most importantly, he was shown entering the arsenal of his late, deranged father at the end of the second installment, after having discovered that Peter and Spider-Man are one and the same individual.
Everything was set up for a cataclysmic confrontation between these once-best friends.
And, truth to tell, perhaps the most interesting beat in Spider-Man 3 is when Peter (after having almost killed him with one of those Goblin grenades) actually asks a scarred Harry for help to battle Venom and the Sandman in order to rescue Mary Jane. Harry says “No,” Parker leaves, faithful butler Bernard (nicely played by John Paxton, incidentally, father of Aliens’ Bill Paxton) tells Harry what he knows: the elder Osborn caused his own death, thus rendering all of Harry’s hate towards Spider-Man null and void. (True, this smacks of plot contrivance, as Bernard could have spoken up far sooner, thus saving Harry and Peter a whole lot of heartache, but what can you do? It’s not like plot contrivances are anything new to this franchise anyway.) Harry then goes off to help his friends, and proves that the words he spoke early on in a hospital bed were the truth.
Now, as painful as Harry’s death was (really the only moving part of the entire film), the sacrifice is essential since this is all meant to be a lesson for Parker (and his words during the final voice-over say as much).
The funny thing is though, the redemption Harry earns is far more evident and potent than Peter’s. And let’s face it, Peter has a hell of a lot to redeem himself for, not just in Mary Jane’s eyes, but in the audience’s as well.
(It should also be noted, where Harry is concerned, that what at first seems to be a painful soap opera cliché, the convenient bout of memory loss, becomes essential to Harry’s pivotal decision in the third act. Harry needed to know what it was like to “come home,” to live without the burning desire for revenge, for him to truly understand the price he was paying for his Spider-Man vendetta, and so that he would have something to fall back on, once Bernard pulls the rug out from under Harry’s hate for Spidey. That amnesia-induced idyll for Harry was there so that his choice to help Peter—despite the bit with the grenade in the face—would actually have resonance and not seem like some mawkish Hollywood convenience.)

Secondly, Venom.
I know this is asking a lot, but let’s put aside all the problematic plot point baggage that comes with Venom, since it does have a role to play in this erstwhile morality play.
Venom is here to show Peter what can happen if he allows his emotions to rule him, if he allows his aggression to come to the fore and shadow his very soul.
This is all very weighty, so why is it that when Venom does seem to take full hold of Peter, it turns him into a sleazy loser? (A sleazy, dancing, and piano-playing loser, to be precise.)
Why does Venom turn Eddie Brock (the still-reeking of That 70’s Show Topher Grace) into a vicious, snaggle-toothed steroid monstrosity, while turning Parker into a pathetic nimrod who would put John Travolta on a Saturday night in the 70’s to shame? (And Travolta really doesn’t need any more embarrassment in his life.)
I’ve always had a bit of a problem with Raimi’s sometimes ill-placed penchant for humour (most famously in that terrible collision of The Evil Dead and the Three Stooges, Army of Darkness), but in a film that arguably should have been the darkest of the series thus far, given its subject matter, there are moments (and stretches) during its 2 hour and 20 minute running time where the laughs are just so out of place, it’s not merely embarrassing, it’s downright painful.

Thirdly, Sandman.
Giving a run for Doc Ock’s money in the Let’s Humanize the Baddie sweepstakes, Flint Marko (played fairly effectively by Thomas Haden Church) is here to give Peter an opportunity to forgive the nominal reason for his Uncle Ben’s death.
This is essential since a major factor in Peter’s choosing to take on the mantle of Spider-Man was because of his uncle’s death. But there was always that element of revenge and bitter hatred and guilt and self-loathing that came with the package. In finding the grace to forgive Marko (whether he actually meant to pull the trigger or not), Peter thus relieves himself of much of the weight that burdens his soul, and hopefully, allows him to learn from all his tribulations and become a better person, man, and hero.*
This is, I feel, one of the greatest shortcomings of Spider-Man 2, that we don’t really see if Peter has changed. He makes his choice, chooses to be Spider-Man, thus sacrificing his love for Mary Jane, but he still ends up getting the girl, who ditched a well-meaning if boring fiancée at the altar to be there for her arachnid love.
And though asking Mary Jane to dance isn’t really that much better (for all we know, Parker just wants to relive his Dancing Venom days), at least there is an inkling of a man who is trying to atone by Spider-Man 3’s end.

So where does all that really leave us?
With the frustrated knowledge that here was an interesting story actually worth telling, but somehow, it just got garbled and mixed up and resulted in the deeply flawed film that is Spider-Man 3.**
Which is sad, because this was ambitious, and had some genuinely interesting moments (mostly within the Harry subplot).
That said, it also had some truly horrendous moments. Not only did the whole protracted Venom-influenced Parker sequence (particularly the piano-and-dance number) seem like it was hijacked from some other, more frivolous film, but like Spider-Man 2, 3 commits the major sin of introducing us not to characters, but to plot complications.
In 2, it was Mary Jane’s astronaut fiancée; here, it’s Gwen Stacy. Bryce Dallas Howard (excellent in The Village and passably acceptable in Lady in the Water) is severely underutilized here, as the plot complication meant to give Brock more reason to hate Parker, and to be a bone of contention between Mary Jane and Peter.
But do we really know anything about her as a person? Not really. As I said, she really isn’t a person to begin with; she’s a plot complication. And to do that to a character like Gwen Stacy, who carries a lot of weight in the Spider-Man comic book mythos, is another whole can of worms.
All things considered though, she’s probably in a better position than astronaut fiancée guy; all he really got to do was be Mary Jane’s Kissing Slut, before getting dumped by her.

Which, in a roundabout sort of way, leads me to another point: as the films progressed, I came to realize these weren’t exactly characters I had grown to like. I mean, I liked them well enough at the beginning, but as I got to know them better, I realized they weren’t particularly nice people.
What Mary Jane does to her fiancée is terrible enough, but to see no hint of remorse on her part…
And Parker. Oh boy. This is not just a flawed character. This is a sad, confused, messed-up guy who never really seems to learn anything. (Although, to be fair, that last dance could be the start of a more mature Peter. Of course, if that happens, it probably won’t be Tobey Maguire in the role any more; which is quite possibly a good thing, as the apparent actor’s fatigue he displayed in Spider-Man 2 has given way to an erratic and agonizingly uneven performance here.)

I could go on—the iffy performances of some of the cast, the (equally and still) iffy CGI, the epileptic pacing, the reliance on plot contrivance and convenience to fuel the narrative, the stunningly needless and grotesquely indulgent Stan Lee cameo, and on and on—but that would be flogging an already lame horse.
If the Raimi brothers (Sam and co-writer Ivan) had perhaps done one more sweep over the script for another draft, and figured out a better way to inject the levity into the proceedings, then this might have been the best of the Spider-Man series thus far.
As it is (and in the questionable tradition of the X-Men franchise), it’s the monstrously flawed third installment that will nonetheless make a squillion dollars worldwide and get the studio to salivate at the prospect of the next cash cow (sorry, I meant “film”) in line.

* It also prevents him from becoming Batman.

** And certainly not the “silly” one George Lucas said it was.

(Spider-Man 3 OS courtesy of aintitcool.com.)