08. Audition (1999, Takashi Miike)
By Eivind Langdal
24th September 2009

There is a sequence in Audition where a lot of girls are auditioned for a film (hardly a plot spoiler, I guess). We see the entire spectrum of girls covered: courageous, shy, smart, dumb, beautiful, and less beautiful. There’s even one who shows the two men auditioning the girls her two suicide scars, and she’s not the craziest one. Oh no, that “honor” is bestowed upon a girl named Asami, who at first seems normal enough, but slowly reveals herself to be one scary woman.

I’m getting ahead of myself here. One of the men who are holding the audition is Aoyama, who lost his wife seven years ago. His son wants him to remarry, but Aoyama has trouble finding the right girl. The real problem is that he wants time to get to know the women, and in his age, time is not what he has the most of. So, his friend, who works for a movie studio, gets what he thinks is a brilliant idea: hold an audition for a film, then let Aoyama pick 30 girls whom he thinks might be a suitable wife, and then come along to the audition to find which one he likes the most. As you can probably guess, he immediately takes curiosity in the aforementioned Asami, a quiet girl who says she took 12 years of ballet training only to have that career destroyed by an accident.

She also tells him that a man working in a record company acts as her agent, and that she works part-time in a sushi bar to support her acting career. What she really does is sit in her apartment for days, waiting for Aoyama to call her. That, he eventually does, which results in one of the most frightening shocks in cinema history. I will not reveal it here, but let’s just say that what happens will make you a more careful selector of which women you date in the future.

Who says horror films primarily have to be scary? Why can’t they be sad, idle, funny, cozy, romantic and surreal too? Takashi Miike, the director of Audition, seems to believe they can. In fact, Audition is not only sad, idle, funny, cozy, romantic and surreal, it is pretty much that in that exact order. Be warned, though: it is also very scary, and the as the film is brought closer to its climax, layer by layer of Asami’s past is peeled off and her true identity becomes frighteningly clear. Before that happens, though, Audition is a truly sweet film, as Aoyama and Asami really hit it off, and the audience can’t help but be engaged in their relationship. We really want them to be together, even though it’s pretty clear that this is not how the film is going to end.

The most commendable thing about Audition is its structure. Instead of going right at the throat, it starts out very slowly and dozes the audience into sweet disbelief about whether this is really a horror film or not. However, the film becomes more and more creepy the closer it gets to its climax, and by the time that final scene makes its appearance, you want to make sure you either have a pillow or the “off” button at the remote control in close vicinity (which one depends on how much you think you can take).

Audition is something rare: a horror film that is not only incredibly smart, but also, and dare I say it, quite sophisticated. Watching it makes you wonder if it was made by someone who doesn’t usually make horror films, but decided that, just once, he would make one, and it’d be one that was as good as he could make it. Yet at the same time, this film couldn’t have been made by someone who had never done a “scary movie” before, as its ability to scare belongs to a person who is in complete control of what he is doing, like a true veteran. As most of you will know, Takashi Miike, the director of the film, is not only seasoned man in horror who has made quite a few films in the genre, but he is also one of the most productive directors in the business altogether. In addition to making Audition in 1999, he also found the time to direct 5 other films in the same year! Between the years 2001 and 2002, he made as many as 15!

But the greatest thing about Audition is that, not only does it appeal to those who wants something more than cheap thrills in their horror films, but also to everyone else as well. Sure, a lot of people will find it to be incredibly slow, but I personally never found it to be that. Miike is a skillful director, and he knows exactly how much he should reveal about Asami and how much he should keep for himself to keep the audience interested before the film’s third and final segment.

I doubt we will see anything like Audition again for a long, long time. It is a brave film, both in how far it is actually willing to go, and in how much it is willing to restrain itself. Sure, there are movies out there that are wilder than this one, and there are those that are calmer, but I can’t think of a single one that manages to play on that juxtaposition with such skill and finesse as Audition. Because of that, this is not only a film that deserves to stand among the greatest horror films of all time, but also among the greatest films in any genre.

Now, altogether now: “Kiri, kiri, kiri”.