Audition2000

A warning is virtually mandated: No one who's even the least bit squeamish should even think about seeing Audition. But, if you have a taste for the disturbing, it's a trip that will stay with you for some time.

Seven years after losing his wife, a lonesome Japanese businessman is ready to seek new romance. He’s been away from the scene for a while, though, and the prospect of dipping a toe back in the dating pool is off-putting. Instead, he sketches a plan on a bar napkin with a pal: they both work in media, why not hold auditions for a phantom film where the leading role is his dream date? Their ruse works - hundreds of pretty, eager young women flood the casting call with snapshots and personal details - and he soon finds what he’s looking for. She wears a convincing mask, but there’s clearly something off with this girl. Still, despite his cohort’s protestations, our widower is too enamored to heed the red flags. Before they’ve even met, he’s painted her as his one in a million, the spitting image of his ideal bride. Why would anyone want to shatter that illusion? Audition shows us a few reasons. As these two play their separate, parallel games, the audience is similarly teased and misled. Famed sicko Takashi Miike (director of Ichi the Killer, 13 Assassins and Happiness of the Katakuris) dedicates crucial scenes to toying with our perceptions, twisting reality until we aren’t sure if we’re seeing a truth or hallucination. While the girl baits her hook, and the guy only hears what he wants, the viewer is misled by each slanted perspective. This really gets out of hand during the home stretch, where needles, sedatives and razor wire enter the fray and the heat cranks up. Then, a combination of pain and chemical fog tilts the previous scenes in a different direction and we’re left to discern the facts for ourselves. This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s lain eyes upon its promo materials (or read the last few sentences), but Audition gets nasty. Grotesquely, sadistically nasty. Its up-front renditions of torment and agony are enough to make the most hardened horror aficionado squirm in their seat. Even Rob Zombie, he of the House of 1000 Corpses, once confessed that this tops his list of most unsettling films. Eihi Shiina is excellent as the dark-hearted torture princess, proper and polite while on the prowl but also emotionally detached and visibly broken. The contrast between the things she does, and the girlish ways she celebrates them, is a major driver of the film’s success and its lasting influence. And that’s some influence. In the ensuing decade, Audition would inspire a glut of especially gross, toe-curling, visceral horror films. Everything from Saw to Hostel put this movie on a pedestal and offered their best impersonation, but these largely overlook the psychological wind-up that makes the gory payoffs so unnerving. As the dust settles and the blood coagulates, as both characters lay forever altered by the consequences of their relationship, we’re left to ask, who really deserved their comeuppance? Or rather, who didn’t?

Audition's take on the war between the sexes is bleak and almost entirely devoid of hope. --It's enough to make you give up dating altogether.