Movies
[Sundance Review] ‘Piercing’ Is a Totally Effed Up Psychological Two-Hander
Two Sundances ago, Nicolas Pesce arrived on the horror scene with The Eyes of My Mother. I’d like to take full credit for discovering him by recognizing his film in the Next section. Now he’s back in the proper Midnight section with Piercing, a deliciously fucked up two handset between a killer and a woman who won’t get killed so easily.
Reed (Christopher Abbott) tells his wife (Laia Costa) he’s going on a business trip. We know he’s planning to murder a woman. He orders an escort, but Jackie (Mia Wasikowska) is more than he was prepared for, and he was prepared a lot. We even see him rehearsing his transition lines and timing the chloroform.
Piercing is really the age-old story of boy meets girl, boy prepares a murder room for girls, girl turns out to be a cutter and self-mutilates before he can do the deed, boy and girl engage in a manipulative battle of wits movie. You know, the usual.
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The film is really between Wasikowska and Abbott. Any reasonable killer would cut his losses after the hospital but Reed sticks with it. I guess you get what you pay for, or some dudes gotta finish what they started. He didn’t really get started though. She beat him to it.
So Reed spends the rest of the night with Jackie sort of warming her up to still be his victim. The way Jackie plays it, you can’t really tell if she is committing suicide by John or she’s messing with him. Tables turn, ones are upped, and it keeps moving for a brisk 81 minutes.
Piercing is as psychological as it is gory, but it’s both. Jackie’s cuts and subsequent injuries fill the gore quotient. Reed has some flashbacks too exploring what probably made him this way.
I never read the Ryu Murakami book it’s based on but Piercing announces its weirdness pretty early. Reed hears voices coming from his baby and other unlikely speakers later in the film. His wife’s reaction once the night goes south is not what you’d expect either.
I sort of felt like Piercing was just getting started around the 80 minute mark. I guess leaving you wanting more is a good thing, and I don’t know if that’s just where the book ended too. I could definitely extend this night into the next day with Jackie and Reed, but for a fleeting one night stand it’s memorable.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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