Audition (1999) by Takashi Miike

I can’t believe we haven’t done a post of Takashi Miike’s Audition yet. I was looking through a list of the top horror movies of all time. There were only 2 in the top 20 that we haven’t covered and one of those was Audition
. This is one of the few posters I’ve posted that scares me. I’m not a big fan of needles, which is like saying I’m not a big fan of getting punched in the face.

The first movie I saw by Takashi Miike was The Happiness of the Katakuris. I watched it with Streebo and it was odd to say the least, but fun. I’ve seen many others since, the most recent being Sukiyaki Western Django which starred Quentin Tarantino of all people. If you check out Takashi Miike’s IMDB page, you’ll notice that he puts out a ton of films. He doesn’t do the one film every 5 years thing. He’s directed 89 films since 1991 (Straw Shield is still in post production at this time).

Learn more about Audition after the leap.

IMDB describes Audition as, “A widower takes an offer to screen girls at a special audition, arranged for him by a friend to find him a new wife. The one he fancies is not who she appears to be after all.” This is a movie that people talk about, I remember when people started talking about and discussing the twisted things this girl does….horrible things. Audition stars Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki and Jun Kunimura. One interesting thing about the film is when the film was screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2000 it had a record number of walkouts. At the Swiss premiere someone passed out and needed emergency room attention. Now that is an intense film.

It seems that most of the scenes from Audition on YouTube are blocked for content (which is understandable) so I can’t really put them on here. It also seems that there aren’t many English interviews with Takashi Miike. So I’ll just show some pictures.