Review of Audition (2000) by Dylan C — 10 Aug 2010

In all my years of watching movies I have never encountered a movie quite like this. I've seen tons of horror movies, ranging from classics like "Jaws" and "The Shining" to straight-to-dvd junk.

While these movies were mostly all different, there was one similarity that they all had and that was that I never find them scary. After watching "The Audition" I can now say I've seen a truly scary movie.

"The Audition" did not disturb as movies like "The Butterfly Effect" have but it had me on the edge of my seat, with my hands clenched most of the movie. Excellently directed by Takashi Miike, "The Audition" is about a middle aged man Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) trying to meet a future wife.

His friend hosts an audition for a fake movie so Aoyama can meet women through the audition. Immediately, he falls in love with one of the women, Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) and they start dating. However as their relationship advances, something seems off about her.

Miike directs this movie with a true understanding of what scares us. He creates developed characters and for once in a horror film, I actually cared about what happened to the main character. This is also because the acting in this movie is very impressive.

Both Ishibashi and Shiina play their roles extremely well and this contributes to the terror we feel while watching these characters interact. While this is a terrific horror film, it's not perfect.

As always, once the mystery begins to unravel and the suspense is lifted, the movie loses some of its scariness. To make up for the lack of suspense, the third act of the movie has a section of torture porn that disappoints only because we know the movie can do better.

However all in all, this is one very, very terrifying horror movie that I give a big recommendation to for anyone looking to be scared.