If a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino decides to praise a certain foreign film as a genius of the horror genre, you can expect anything but conventional. In fact, you’d be more accurate considering that you may be looking at a twisted, insane piece of sharp gore that is still genuinely shocking, not cheap shock like certain empty provocateurs can fall for.
Because Takashi Miike, in addition to being prolific to the point of exhaustion, is someone whose style is in good harmony with what he is trying to tell. And we are talking about someone who has tried everything. However, the consensus is clear when it comes to determining what is his roundest and most sweeping film. Even Quentin joins in putting the disturbing ‘ on a pedestalAudition‘.
deadly chamber test
A man in his forties recently lost his wife, and to turn the page he looks for different ways to find a partner. One of his friends suggests he pretend to be doing a casting for a non-existent movie, and find among the candidates one with whom the spark arises and to be able to make a new marriage. One of them seems the one, but after a night together she disappears. He desperately tries to find her, but what he finds is something he wishes he had never seen.
The film, available to watch through Filmin, is unclassifiable due to its impossible mix of styles. It is very surprising Japanese horror, in which the intrigues of the psychological thriller, the crimes of serial killers, the extreme graphic violence carried out in the most stomach-turning way and also the torture with the most unexpected instruments have a place.
The latter is the aspect where ‘Audition’ is a crucial and influential work. The whole wave of torture porn and the extreme embodied in the new wave of French horror and in irreverent authors like Eli Roth arises directly from the harrowing scenes of violence which Mike shows. Of course, this violence is elegant in a really disturbing way, despite the fact that it is not cut with the explicitness of certain sequences.
‘Audition’: really visceral
Shocking and with a lot of bad satirical slime. The Japanese director uses diabolical and extremely clever tricks to create a powerful and shocking threat that is extremely plausible. Even with his explicit violence and his over-the-top plot moments, he’s never without a certain grounding in reality that makes it really visceral.
A surprising and original proposal that caused a sensation and worship at the time and still maintains a terrifying aura that gives goosebumps. It may not be the most accessible of all Miike’s works to delve into his vast universe, but it is an extraordinary and very gratifying proposal for hardline horror fans and for those who already take the measure of the director. In other words, it is essential.
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