Audition Review
Sometimes one’s expectations can be just as unsettling as the movie itself, especially when more time passes before we actually see it. The experiences that we go through, the idea that we’ve seen enough of life to have us hardened enough, still keep us on our toes. We don’t let go of that prejudice until we finally work up enough courage to see for ourselves. When I first heard of this movie I had all of this built up. Now that I finally saw it, did it meet my expectations? It did, it just also did something I should’ve known (at least completely) it would do: defy them. I think what ultimately helped were two factors that it had in common with: It being the third Takeshi Miike film I had ever seen, and the fact I had prepared myself in advance by watching other horror movies from the 90s so as to best accustom myself to this aesthetic. Overall, yes, this is one of his more messed up works. But at its best it’s essentially everything somehow good about The Happiness of the Katakuris if it was condensed through a beta (yet still fairly effective) version of the yet to be popularized torture porn genre (rather than passive aggressive non-sequiturs) in order to remain unwatchable apparently. It’s not a bad film, just one that’s not for the faint of heart which (taking into account everyone else’s word for it) doesn’t even want replay value. (Note: It also didn’t help I saw MCR’s ‘Honey, this mirror isn’t big enough for the two of us’ video more than a decade before watching this).