AUDITION: Oh, those wacky, wacky Japanese! I really wonder what the hell's wrong with their culture when it comes to making movies like this. AUDITION was my first plunge into the Oriental "BODY HORROR" genre. And boy, let me tell ya, did director TAKASHI MIIKE (also responsible for the necrophilia, incest problematic family-unit flick, VISITOR Q) really get me good! But first, what I mean by "BODY HORROR", is that the focus of this film is the gratuitous bodily dismemberment and mutilation of another human being. Oh, there is a love story in here but I swear that the ending will leave you sooo shell-shocked that it'll certainly make you forget about that altogether. But in case you need reminding, it's basically about an older fella (and a pretty nice guy too) who's wife died years ago. His son urges him to date again but he's just not too sure how to start since it's been such a long time. Luckily, he works as a movie casting director and he gets the opportunity to meet a girl through the agency. Everything seems to work out fine until it's time for them to have sex. She offers herself to him freely only if he promises to love her, and love ONLY her. Not thinking (or rather, reading between the lines, why should he have to) about exactly what she's said, he promises to do so and that's that, whoopee is made. Well, you guessed it, she soon finds out that he has a son, whom he certainly loves as well, and so, BAM!, the promise has been broken (he no longer loves ONLY her) and she promptly goes about to fuck him up somthing awful! So, brace yourself and if you can make it through the VERY slow opening hour (it's all in build up), you'll be rewarded with some truely outrageous and horrific scenes of disturbingly graphic gore and offensive imagery which I guarantee that you may NEVER be able to forget. This is FATAL ATTRACTION on a whole different, deeper level of depravity. My God, how could such a sweet little Japanese girl do such horrible things?! I have to set the tone and tell you about one of her victims without spoiling too much about the film itself. This girl keeps a man in a human-sized potato sack. She has sawed off his feet so he can't run away if he gets out of the tied bag. She has snatched out his tongue so he can't speak other than making a moist gurgling sound. She has cut off most of his fingers and makes him crawl on all fours. But the capper is, without a doubt, feeding time. After she's eaten her dinner, she throws it back up into a dog dish and serves this peach-colored, chunky gruel to him. We actually get to see him lap it up as an animal would. Humgh! I'm feel like I'm about to blow chunks my damn self! Humgh! Humgh! And that's not even the worst part of the film either. It comes at the end in a massive wave of unsettling sensory hysteria that'll have you scrambling to find the "stop" button on your remote. And when it's done, you'll sit there, as I did, and stare blankly at the screen wondering if what you actually saw was something that was meant for human consumption. Shame on you, TAKASHI MIIKE, shame on you!
-Steve