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