Piercing

I like the 70s style to the film and the send off of Hitchcock but not the substance of the plot and the failure to ultimately deliver, especially the ending... although there were things to be admired about this film

The novel by Ryu Murakami was billed as being a shocking work of horror, reminiscent of his horror masterpiece, Audition. I thought that by watching the film, I would get an idea of what the story in the book might entail. This movie, however, was not scary and it was not anywhere near the brilliance of Audition. It was a stylish modernized neo-noir thriller, disguised as a character study, disguised as a horror movie. This movie has no solid identity, and to call it a straight horror film would be incorrect, just like calling it a thriller would also be. What it is is a movie that tries to do many things, but the only thing it succeeds in being is being pretty. Personified, this movie is like a runway model who has no other talents. Very nice to look at...but that's it.

We have the lead, who is as unlikable a character as you can get. We barely have to time to get to know him, and I immediately disliked everything about him. He's mousy, frail and weak; everything a leading man shouldn't be. He has a dangerous fetish, and is trying to go through with it by using a call girl.

The call girl is as crazy as you expect, but she is also unlikable. She is also mousy and frail, looking as if she would tip over if you breathed on her. She has no redeemable qualities, and makes you not really care about her disposition.

Side characters are not given enough screen time to matter, and flashbacks don't have the impact they would have if you cared about anyone in the movie. I would liken watching this movie like sitting through a home movie of a group of people I disliked. I struggled to care, I was a bit shocked at what was going on, but in the end I was left with a resounding, "That's it? MEH!", which a movie should NEVER do.

The Japanese language has many nuances that don't really translate well to English. This is probably why there hasn't been a truly exceptional American film that was made from a work of Japanese literature. I am going to read the novel to see how it holds up to the film, and I really hope that it is nothing like this movie.

I was looking forward to the follow up of one of my favorite horror movies, "The Eyes of My Mother'. I could not be more disappointed.

What a shame.

Set in what appears to be a New York City that looks like Singapore, a new father and husband on an out of town trip orders up a hooker to come to his hotel room in order to kill her with an ice pick. It doesn't work as planned. This movie has strange and unexplained elements like why is he planning to do this? Why is there a little tiny monster in the bathroom. Why does he react to sleeping pills strangely. Why does the hooker live in a veritable tiny palace. It's still a delightful horror.

This is a pretty solid little thriller/horror flick. It has enough disturbing imagery and uncomfortable themes to keep even the most hardened of genre-fans entertained and captivated from start to finish. It boasts some solid performances and some inspired direction, and in the end, it provides a creepy enough atmosphere for me to recommend it to people I know are horror fans.

From Nicolas Pesce, the writer and director of The Eyes of My Mother (2016), and based on the 1994 novel by Ryû Murakami (who also wrote the novel upon which the similarly themed Audition (1999) was based), Piercing is a darkly comic psychosexual thriller. Partly a screwball comedy about a fastidious man's attempt to murder a prostitute, and his confusion and helplessness when he realises that that prostitute is far more disturbed than he is, the film dares the audience to attempt to figure out who is in charge at any given moment, and to ponder whether one (or both) of these characters would actually be quite happy to be the other's victim. Purposely made to look like a sleazy seventies skin flick, the film's sense of nostalgia drips off the screen, manifest in everything from the music borrowed from giallo films to the art-deco production design to the patently fake urban skyline to the lurid opening credits (complete with retro "Feature Presentation" card). In this sense, Pesce is a stylist, in the best sense of the term. However, at the moment, he's a stylist without much to say; as in The Eyes of My Mother, he is unable to match his not-inconsiderable aesthetic acumen with any kind of significant or tangible emotionality. The two leads are not necessarily the type of characters we're naturally predisposed to feel empathetic towards, but we surely must be expected to feel something. Anything. However, with no real sense of psychological verisimilitude nor much in the way of interiority, they remain essentially blank canvases, and primarily for this reason, the film feels more like a sketch than a finished product.

Set in a non-specific city, the barely-there plot concerns Reed (Christopher Abbott), who decides he is going to kill a prostitute in an attempt to purge himself of the thoughts he's been having about murdering his own baby. Planning every aspect of the murder, he rehearses everything from how long the chloroform will leave her unconscious to how best to carry her to the bathroom to begin the dismemberment, and records every detail in a small book. However, when the time comes to do the deed, things go down-hill fast, as Jackie (a superb turn from Mia Wasikowska) isn't entirely sane herself.

Partly a film about coming to terms with desires deemed fetishistic by society, and partly an erotic thriller about two people who seem genuinely confused as to whether they're teammates or opponents, the film's most salient theme is, perhaps, the issue of sexual consent, and how easily muddled it can become. It's a brave theme to take on in this post MeToo era, with the film daring to ask whether consent should still be applicable if a person has consented to something harmful to their person, even up to the point of consensual homicide. Although there's no cannibalism in the film, the storyline reminded me a little of the 2001 case of Armin Meiwes, who murdered and ate Bernd Jürgen Brandes with Brandes's complete consent. The film doesn't deal with the case explicitly, but the shifting sexual power-play between Reed and Jackie, and the fact that at least twice, one of them believes they've been granted permission to murder the other, raises similar moral issues.

Within the parameters of this theme, one of the most obvious aspects of the film is its sense of humour, with many of the laughs coming from how utterly anal Reed is. Half Patrick Bateman, half Frank Spencer, once an unpredictable human element is introduced into his scheme, he finds himself unable to think on-the-fly. As his meticulously laid plans go up in smoke, he proves comically inept at handling any kind of interpersonal relationship. However, the fact that most of the comedy lands on his shoulders throws into relief perhaps the film's most egregious problem; although a good 90% of the narrative is told from his perspective, there's precious little to his personality. Granted, a couple of final-act flashbacks fill us in on why he is so obsessed with murder, but his character simply isn't capable of filling out the film's 81 minutes. And there's less character detail on Jackie than there is on Reed. Despite this, Wasikowska gives a superb performance, all facial tics, unspoken volatility, and nervous mannerisms, with an almost balletic way of moving.

The problem for me is that nothing in the film really lingers - and when some of the imagery is this extreme, it should definitely linger. For example, I've never been able to completely forget my first viewing of Ôdishon - not because of the violence per se, but because the film spends so long building up the character of Aoyama (Ryô Ishibashi), so that when those needles and that wire saw come out, you absolutely feel the weight of what is about to happen. In Piercing, I don't really think there's any depravity that Reed and Jackie could have inflicted on one another that would have provoked an emotional response, because I didn't know them, and therefore was unable to care about them, as people.

Aesthetically, however, there's a great deal to praise here, with the sound design particularly inventive. During Reed's rehearsal of the murder, he goes through the entire act, from the initial drugging to the dismemberment. On screen, we see him pantomime the actions, but on the soundtrack, we hear the disturbing foley of everything - so as he's miming sawing, we hear a saw cut through flesh and bone. It's a brilliant way to place us firmly within his subjective experience, and it also serves to remind us that the innocent looking Reed is very much planning to do real harm to someone. On a similar note, the music is absolutely top notch. Eschewing an original score, the film instead employs pre-existing tracks primarily from giallo films, including Goblin's scores for Les Frissons de l'angoisse (1975) and Ténèbres (1982), and Bruno Nicolai's score for La dame rouge tua 7 fois (1972).

The visual aesthetic is oftentimes as impressive as the aural. Exteriors (of which there are very few beyond the opening and closing credits) are obviously miniatures, with very little effort to make them look photorealistic. This sets an otherworldly tone right from the start, as if the film is taking place in a slightly alternate reality, as the real and the fake mix together in Reed's confused mind. Interiors are blank, as if they are show-houses, not actually inhabited by a flesh and blood person - one shot, for example, shows a drink's cabinet where the bottles have no brands, just the name of the alcohol. Again, this sets the film's reality apart, as if everything is happening just outside our own world, or our own conception of the world. There are also a couple of nods to the master of body horror, David Cronenberg - a stomach wound pulses and expands as if breathing, a gigantic beetle crawls out of a toilet and infects a character's face, scissor wounds are curiously fingered, a character's ear is split open with a tin opener. It's all very Disney!

Ultimately, however, Piercing is more interested in aesthetics than exploring the psychology of the characters. The increasingly extreme goings-on are never anything more than a jokey end unto themselves, with the psychological path that has led the characters to these extremities relatively ignored. With Pesce focused on comedy beats, there are certainly a few laughs, but there's precious little substance. He's undoubtedly adept at evoking the most absurdly grotesque comedy, but he is, thus far in his career, equally as uninterested in developing character or plot. And for that reason, the film comes across more like a calling-card than a self-sustained and complete product.