Piercing

Reed is a husband and father who has spent years thinking about murder as a dark sport rather than a crime, and tonight the fantasy becomes a plan. After kissing his wife and baby goodbye on a business trip, he checks into a hotel with a notebook full of steps and a tempo he promises himself he can control. He intends to stage the perfect murder and vanish without a trace, a coldly rational act that will prove something to himself and the world. Yet as his meticulous setup unfolds, a chance encounter with a wildly unpredictable call girl named Jackie pushes his careful calculations toward the edge. What follows is a tense, claustrophobic dance of danger, deception, and desire. The camera stays tight and the sound design remains spare, turning a routine hotel corridor into a pressure cooker, and leaving viewers unsettled long after.

Produced and directed by Nicolas Pesce, Piercing adapts Ryū Murakami's novel and landed in 2019 after a marquee presence at the Toronto and other festivals. This is Pesce's second feature after The Eyes of My Mother, continuing his stark, clinical style.

Box office figures for Piercing are modest, reflecting a limited release and niche horror audience. It found more life on streaming and in festival conversations than in wide theaters.

Among genre fans, Piercing is noted for its austere visuals and cold mood, a blunt take on obsession and violence that leans toward psychological tension rather than gore. It sparked quiet discussions about adaptation choices and Nicolas Pesce's distinctive approach.

Critics were divided but drew a line through its themes: the lure of control, the costs of deception, and the slippery boundary between domestic life and danger. The film is praised for its precise pacing, performance dynamics, and the way it uses restraint to heighten suspense.