Tag Archives: Christopher Abbott

Piercing (2018): Rigorous Aesthetics without Psychological Depth

A married man with a loving wife and an adorable infant daughter has one tiny guilty pleasure: stabbing people. Coming from Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of My Mother), the story centers on Reed (Christopher Abbott; It Comes at Night) as he plans and initiates the killing of a prostitute to satisfy his unnatural desire. The unsuspecting victim is Jackie (Mia Wasikowska; Stoker) who enters his hotel room expecting a night of S&M. The film is adapted from a novel by Ryu Murakami, author of the book that would become Takashi Miike’s Audition, so those familiar with his previous work have an idea of the kind of twisted events about to play out.

For fans of Pesce’s first film or of Murakami’s novel, the tone is going to be jarring. The source material was serious and psychological. It focused on the past of the main characters and provided deep insights into how childhood trauma and abuse can manifest in adulthood. The film is much more playful. It’s in the vein of movies like You’re Next that offer genre thrills but are self-aware of their own ridiculousness. Pesce takes Reed’s planning of the attack and turns into comedy by having him pantomime the act with a silly level of earnestness. But he doesn’t allow the humor to completely mask the actual violence. He includes unpleasant sound effects for each movement to remind us of the danger at hand. This is a movie that, while gruesome in several scenes, you are meant to have fun with and laugh at.

The clothing is another unplaceable aspect of the film’s style.

The film’s production design is stunning. Pesce has relocated Murakami’s story to the United States but sets it in an unknown location. He uses miniatures for the city landscape that communicate an fabricated world, one that, due to its stylization, is out of place and out of time. The technology shown indicates the story in set in the past, but the exact decade is deliberately obfuscated. Pesce uses a variety of stylistic choices to prevent the film from being grounded. The interiors have green shag carpeting and glistening wood-paneled walls that are from the 60s but the bright colors used call back to Italian giallo movies of the 70s and make the sets feel like dollhouses. The untraceable, artificial setting gives the film a strange, fable-like quality.

Pesce shows clear vision in his adaptation, but his choices often lessen the film’s impact. The film feels meticulous in its planning and execution and the subdued but unsettling acting fits perfectly with the intended tone, but the lack of psychological elements rob the story of its depth. Reed and Jackie’s histories are hinted at through well-executed but fleeting flashbacks yet this isn’t enough to add motive to their behavior. Instead, we are forced to react only to their actions onscreen, removed from the important context of their pasts that was previously present in the novel. The actions, particularly the violent ones, are well executed as Pesce knows how to make an audience squirm when he wants to, but without a grounding motivation. Piercing can be enjoyed for it rigorous details and Pesce’s laudable vison, but the lack of character development prevent the film from engaging on an emotional level.

3/5 stars.

It Comes at Night (2017)

In a boarded-up cabin somewhere in the U.S., a family lives in isolation. Paul (Joel Edgerton; The Gift), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo; Selma), and their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) lead strictly regimented lives. After a needed, but traumatic act is performed, Travis begins to have nightmares about what their living situation requires. Their routine is interrupted when a man named Will (Christopher Abbott) breaks into their house, claiming to be searching for supplies for his family.

While Travis may be conflicted about their actions, Paul has no such quandaries. Edgerton plays the character with a harsh, but necessitated practicality. Every rule they adopt and action they take is designed to protect the family. He doesn’t view things as right or wrong, he sees them as safe or unsafe. When Will enters the picture, it complicates his perspective. He sees himself in Will, another man just trying to take care of his wife and son, and takes some measured risks to help him. It’s the uneasy trust between the two families in the face of the outside threats that is thematic center of the film.

The cinematography, particularly within the cabin, is incredible. Director Trey Edward Shults (Krisha) moves his camera through the house like a cat burglar, smoothly creeping into each room. It maintains its distance however, adding a sense of voyeurism to the images. The sight of Travis quietly walking around the house is always unsettling. His movement is lit only by his lantern whose light reflects off the wood paneled walls like a flashlight held under one’s face during a fireside ghost story. There is tension with every creaking of his steps and the film is at its best when the seclusion and supposed safety of the cabin is translated into fear of the unknown beyond its one entry point, an ominous red locked door.

The foreboding lighting makes their cabin a precarious setting.

There’s a disconnect between what many will expect and what the Shults is interested in delivering. The title, while fantastic for the right type of horror movie, is misleading. It implies that the film is a monster movie, which it clearly isn’t. This is a film that examines the effect of extreme pragmatism created in the wake of a society destroying event. It’s not about creatures in the dark, it’s about the extent to which people lose their humanity when acting solely in their own interest. It’s the conflict between altruism and self-preservation and the risks that either choice creates. The title and marketing hint that there is or could be something beyond the human dangers, but there isn’t – or at least it doesn’t manifest during the course of the movie.

That isn’t a spoiler, it’s a preface. The film does itself a disservice by playing into the tropes of a monster movie. This decision creates an expectation in the audience for something supernatural which will cause many to be disappointed and overlook the other stellar components of the film. It Comes at Night is a deliberate thriller suffused with atmospheric tension that deserves to be appreciated for what it is and not maligned for what it occasionally pretends to be.

4/5 stars.