"Audition" - Film Review

 Splatter films re-emerged at the turn of the 21st century, but many lacked the intelligence or craftsmanship of their forbearers (e.g. Dawn of the Dead, Eyes Without a Face, Black Sunday, and Bad Taste). These new splatter films were dubbed by detractors as “torture porn”. They excessively turned up the blood and nudity (often at the expense of the characters and character development). Some of the films noted as part of this trend, such as the Saw and Hostel franchises, literally feature torture. The newer films misunderstand the point of the buckets of blood of their predecessors. Older films used gleeful amounts of blood (on smaller budgets) not just because it was entertaining, but because it began to broach a level of uncomfortable, self-aware absurdity; the blood and violence was a commentary. The new films feature all the blood but none of the brains. The blood is a means in of itself for the latest batch of splatter horror. For the older films, there was something entertaining to be had from it for sure, but not at the cost of making an interesting, memorable, thoughtful film.

While Audition is more of a psychological horror film than a splatter movie, it does end very bloody. However, Audition builds the groundwork to justify its use of the blood and the context in which it’s used. It earns the moments where it shocks and disturbs us.

Audition is a film that’s meant to provoke; to get a reaction. The last 30 minutes are so disturbing, unsettling, and jarring that they feel like a very different film at times from what we’ve seen before it (including a dreamlike montage that’s disgusting and disconcerting). But there have been hints that this is the ultimate direction the film is leading to. The suggestions up to this point should lead us to believe that Yamazaki Asami (Eihi Shiina) is perhaps not the most stable or normal or even sane of individuals (including a particularly memorable, creepy scene where we first get to see the inside of Asami’s apartment).

Aoyama Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) may be a lonely widower desperate for, and encouraged to, marry someone. But the way he goes about finding someone to marry is rather misogynistic and devious. Shigeharu, at the behest of a friend who works for a television company, fakes a tv show audition in order to "audition" young women for the “role” of his wife. Shigeharu narrows the resumes down to the top 30, but becomes fixated on Asami when he reads her essay about an injury that stopped her from performing ballet ever again. Imagining she has real emotional depth, he becomes absolutely obsessed with Asami, too blinded to pick up on the fact that sometimes emotional depth is caused by deep psychological damage and trauma.  

Shigeharu ultimately gets payback for his questionable actions. I won’t get into much detail, but boy is it fucked up. Asami may be crazy but she’s definitely been wronged in the way she’s been chosen as Shigaru’s future wife, and so on some level we root for her vengeance against the man who objectified and mislead her. The ending is a slight cop out though that ties up things a little too nicely for a film that is so thoroughly marked by deep, vivid psychologically unnerving imagery. 

Audition will disturb and unsettle you; it gets uncomfortably under your skin, and it doesn’t hold back its horror punches that it builds up wonderfully to and then forces you to stew in. There are better horror movies, but there aren’t many quite like director Takashi Miike’s Audition. 

Grade: B+