Nicolas Pesce
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Filmography
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American Psycho (2000)
Directed by Mary Harron
influenced Piercing (2019)
Themes Characters Dialogue
To get the obvious out of the way, Piercing has this palpable and murder-driven atmosphere not unlike American Psycho; female victims, sticking to a routine plan, and being an adaptation of a book from the 1990s makes Piercing feel like homage to what is arguably Christian Bale’s breakout film.
Abbott conjures up terror and laughter on par with Christian Bale’s performance as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho as he balances the embodiment of a lingering threat and comical character.
There's a dab of "American Psycho" in materialistic details.
The sophomore feature film from writer-director Nicolas Pesce ( The Eyes of My Mother ), Piercing is a psychosexual thriller that shares some of the same DNA as American Psycho but is entirely its own creature.
So he concocts a plan to commit a murder, in a very American Psycho voiceover.
Picture American Psycho for millennials, with less business card panic attacks and more feminist subversion, and you’ll be somewhere in the right ballpark.
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
Directed by Víctor Erice
influenced The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Themes
In early scenes, meanwhile, as protagonist Francisca is introduced in the girlhood form of striking newcomer Olivia Bond, it’s not just the young actress’s dark, concentrated gaze that recalls Ana Torrent in “The Spirit of the Beehive”; both films probe children’s repulsed fascination with the monstrous, though “Eyes” literalizes the terror in the barn rather more emphatically than Victor Erice’s 1973 classic.
Writer/director Nicolas Pesce makes an accomplished transition from music videos with this darkly disturbing slice of American Gothic that wears its debts to Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) with quiet pride.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
influenced The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Themes Visuals Plot
Horror stories find different ways to isolate the victims, by setting stories in desolate, out-of-the-way places (like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Psycho), or by putting characters in situations where other people won’t believe them, or just can’t help.
If Ingmar Bergman had helmed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , it might look something like this exquisite nightmare.
Shooting in ominous black and white (often from a high, airy remove), Pesce has made an exquisite creepshow that pays homage to the mightiest of fear films, Tobe Hooper’s silent-majority satire The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), while still having a coppery taste all its own.
Or maybe an even better comparison would be classic “wrong turn” horror films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or “The People Under the Stairs,” where ordinary folks who make the mistake of knocking on the worst possible doors.
It’s comparable to the early section of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before Leatherface makes his presence fully known.
Presenting itself as something like an Ingmar Bergman-directed remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Eyes of My Mother has little use for plot, character or dialogue, instead relying on lighting, sound effects and the terrifying presence of its lead actress, Kika Magalhaes, to seduce and horrify its audience.
Magalhaes is breathtaking in her role, too, a haunting mix of doe-eyed innocence and danger that reminds me of a young Felissa Rose in Sleepaway Camp or even Jessica Harper from Suspiria .
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Directed by Charles Laughton
influenced The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Visuals Characters Themes
Pesce’s heartland Gothic visuals — specifically the very inky expanses of Zach Kuperstein’s glorious widescreen lensing — conjure spooked memories of Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter.”
Not so innocent is the leering home invader (Will Brill) who, in one terrifyingly framed interior shot, seems designed to bring back memories of Robert Mitchum in Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter” (1955).
Shot, digitally, in beautifully composed black-and-white, this darkly comic feature about a young girl growing up in violent times is set on an isolated American farm that looks like it could be just down the road from where Charles Laughton’s classic and equally unclassifiable The Night of the Hunter was set.
The striking feature debut of music video director Nicolas Pesce is a poised and meticulously controlled slice of American gothic that blends together a slew of influences from Hitchcock to Haneke via David Lynch and The Night of the Hunter .
Writer/director Nicolas Pesce makes an accomplished transition from music videos with this darkly disturbing slice of American Gothic that wears its debts to Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) with quiet pride.
Magalhaes is breathtaking in her role, too, a haunting mix of doe-eyed innocence and danger that reminds me of a young Felissa Rose in Sleepaway Camp or even Jessica Harper from Suspiria .
In fact, there's something about Francisca that's oddly reminiscent of Eihi Shiina's Asami from the 1999 Japanese horror movie Audition.
And the humour is of the nature that is sure to elicit awkward fits of laughter, reminiscent of David Slade‘s Hard Candy or Mitchell Lichtenstein‘s Teeth , both horror films where women turn the tables on men.
Following the success of Gore Verbinski’s The Ring , The Grudge confirmed that there was audience interest (read: money) in adaptations of successful Japanese horror franchises, in this case the Ju-On films originated by Takashi Shimizu.
But for all its genre appropriate flourishes and gory craftsmanship which defies the theatrical release date in which its studio abandoned it, Pesce has little wiggle room to revitalize a familiar story which became a derivative template for countless films in the wake of Shimizu and Gore Verbinski’s The Ring (2002) remake.
When The Ring , the American version of the Japanese horror film Ringu , came out in 2002, it was like I had been hit by a truck.
It wasn’t long before Hollywood took notice, cranking out a Grudge remake in 2004, The Ring in 2002 and Pulse in 2006.
The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
influenced The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Plot
At the hands of a less inspired filmmaker, THE EYES OF MY MOTHER would have surely been reduced to yet another silly iteration of the Addams Family-meets-The Beverly Hillbillies fish-out-of-water trope.
Psycho (1960)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Themes Visuals Characters
Horror stories find different ways to isolate the victims, by setting stories in desolate, out-of-the-way places (like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Psycho), or by putting characters in situations where other people won’t believe them, or just can’t help.
Working with the cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, he has absorbed a crucial lesson from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” filming in lustrous black-and-white images in which shadows are as dark and inky as bloodstains.
If Psycho 's Norman Bates had a sister then she might be a lot like Francisca in The Eyes of My Mother .
Put aside the photography and Eyes is little more than the caboose on the torture-porn train, with Psycho-esque Freudian pretensions to boot.
It’ll likely be compared to the macabre works of Chan-wook Park (“Oldboy,” 2003) and Takashi Miike’s “Audition” (1999), and fairly so: Miike’s bloody mating game was based on a novel by Ryû Murakami, who is also behind the material in “Piercing,” though Pesce’s followup to his equally eerie debut, “The Eyes of My Mother” (2016), isn’t quite as visceral.
Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
Directed by Sean Durkin
influenced The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Themes
From “Martha Marcy May Marlene” to “Simon Killer” and this year’s “Christine,” these filmmakers have fixated on probing the subjective experiences of alienated characters.
Pesce is the latest talent to emerge from the New York-based Borderline Films stable, following Antonio Campos ( Afterschool ), Sean Durkin ( Martha Marcy May Marlene ), and Josh Mond ( James White ).
Pesce is a next-generation addition to the collective at Borderline Films, whose Sean Durkin, Antonio Campos, and Josh Mond are responsible for some of the most exciting American art films of the past decade — visionary hybrids of character sketch and genre exercise like “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Afterschool,” “Simon Killer,” and “James White.”
The debut film by writer/director Nicholas Pesce – and produced by Borderline Films, the collective behind Afterschool, James White and Martha Marcy May Marlene – The Eyes of My Mother is a film tailor-made for the sliver of overlap on the “Art House/Gore Hound” Venn diagram.
This film comes from Borderline Films, a production company that’s mastered the art of tortured souls in past Sundance fare like Martha Marcy May Marlene , Simon Killer and James White .
Which is how good horror should operate; given that the movie comes blessed by Borderline Films, an indie outfit responsible for films like Afterschool (2008) and Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), you might think that this skew towards the imprint's in-house nihilistic chic.
(Ommetaphobes should be warned, if the title doesn’t tip them off, that they’re in for one of the squirmiest sits in a movie theater since Bunuel’s “Un chien andalou.”)
Mama also tells her that cows’ eyes are very similar to those of humans: cut to a severed bovine head on the kitchen table, as Mother—with shades of Un Chien Andalou —demonstrates exactly what she means.
Seriously, The Eyes of My Mother feels like Un Chien Andalou viewed through the eyes of a sociopath.
Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Directed by Georges Franju
influenced The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Themes
The Eyes of My Mother is roughly analogous to Franjus wonderful Eyes without a Face, in the sense that both affect a non-exploitive art house approach that makes horror stand out in contrast like a bloody carcass tossed onto an intricate silk tablecloth.
A quick survey of the familiarly-titled carnage: 2016’s dismal Blair Witch , 2009’s regrettable Friday the 13th , 2018’s limp Halloween , 2010’s pitiful A Nightmare on Elm Street , 2017’s dull Leatherface , 2013’s passable Evil Dead and 2015’s dreadful Poltergeist .
It’s especially dispiriting to see producer Sam Raimi’s name attached to this lunk-headed project – but then again, he was responsible for the equally flimsy/unnecessary remakes of classics like Poltergeist , his own Evil Dead , and yes, you guessed it, 2004’s The Grudge .
Sam Raimi (director of the first three “Spider-Man” movies, “Evil Dead” and “Drag Me to Hell”) is a producer of all of the Hollywood versions of “The Grudge,” so it’s disappointing that he’s behind a horror movie as boring as this one.
Dogtooth (2009)
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
influenced The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Characters Themes
She’s as removed from the world as the children in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, and as prone to startling behavior, with no sense of conscience or remorse.
(Think the shock comedy of Dogtooth , but with twice the shock and none of the comedy.)
From “Martha Marcy May Marlene” to “Simon Killer” and this year’s “Christine,” these filmmakers have fixated on probing the subjective experiences of alienated characters.
Pesce is a next-generation addition to the collective at Borderline Films, whose Sean Durkin, Antonio Campos, and Josh Mond are responsible for some of the most exciting American art films of the past decade — visionary hybrids of character sketch and genre exercise like “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Afterschool,” “Simon Killer,” and “James White.”
This film comes from Borderline Films, a production company that’s mastered the art of tortured souls in past Sundance fare like Martha Marcy May Marlene , Simon Killer and James White .
Así, psycho-killers tan célebres como el Norman Bates de Psicosis (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) o la chica con telequinesia de Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) encontraron una excusa para su enfado contra el mundo en la educación castradora recibida de unas madres de sexualidad frustrada y refugiadas en la religión, mientras que otros como May (Lucky McKee, 2002) o Willard (Glen Morgan, 2003) se construían su propio mundo de amigos imaginarios –rodeados por muñecas y ratas, respectivamente–, en respuesta al rechazo que sufrían desde pequeños por ser diferentes.
Pesce is the latest talent to emerge from the New York-based Borderline Films stable, following Antonio Campos ( Afterschool ), Sean Durkin ( Martha Marcy May Marlene ), and Josh Mond ( James White ).
Pesce is a next-generation addition to the collective at Borderline Films, whose Sean Durkin, Antonio Campos, and Josh Mond are responsible for some of the most exciting American art films of the past decade — visionary hybrids of character sketch and genre exercise like “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Afterschool,” “Simon Killer,” and “James White.”
Which is how good horror should operate; given that the movie comes blessed by Borderline Films, an indie outfit responsible for films like Afterschool (2008) and Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), you might think that this skew towards the imprint's in-house nihilistic chic.