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Audition (2001)
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Reviews Counted:59
Fresh:45
Rotten:14
Average Rating:6.9/10
Consensus: An audacious, unsettling Japanese horror film from director Takashi Miike, Audition entertains as both a grisly shocker and a psychological drama.
Theatrical Release:Aug 8, 2001 Limited
Synopsis: AUDITION is an art-house cult horror film that will be talked about for a long time to come. Ryo Ishibashi stars as Aoyama, a single father who has not dated since his wife died seven years... AUDITION is an art-house cult horror film that will be talked about for a long time to come. Ryo Ishibashi stars as Aoyama, a single father who has not dated since his wife died seven years earlier. To help find another woman to bring joy into Aoyama's charmless life, his best friend, television producer Yoshikawa, convinces Aoyama that they should add a fake part to a show they are auditioning actresses for--a role that will become Aoyama's real-life companion. After a series of comical auditions, in walks a woman whom Aoyama thinks is perfect--Asami, played by former model Eihi Shiina. But when Aoyama proves too tentative in his courting--and starts learning odd things about Asami's past--she decides to exact a revenge that filmgoers will never forget. Director Takashi Miike's film, based on the novel by Ryu Murakami, begins like a slow-moving romance, carefully developing the characters and their maturing relationships. But suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the mood and pace change, smashing viewers over the head with fast cuts between the past and the present, with dreamlike images that turn into torrid nightmares, with screams and shouts where there had been soft-spoken whispers, with blood and violence that replaces love and longing. The last section of the film is one of the most brutal torture scenes ever put on celluloid, and it is definitely not for the faint of heart. But even in its gore-filled shockingness, the film is beautiful to look at, a monumental achievement by a director willing to take chances and challenge his audience. [More]
Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Jun Kunimura, Miyuki Matsuda
Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Jun Kunimura, Miyuki Matsuda, Ren Osugi, Renji Ishibashi, Tetsu Sawaki
Director: Takashi Miike
Director: Takashi Miike
Screenwriter: Daisuke Tengan
Producer: Soji Fukushima, Satoshi Hukushima, Akemi Suyama
Composer: Koji Endo
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Reviews for Audition
(The) disturbed and disturbing psycho-horror nightmare begins as a gentle romance based on a lie and then shoots into the Twilight Zone of obsession, sadism, and mutilation.
A lentidão dos dois primeiros atos e o pseudo-surrealismo do terceiro, além de não combinarem, criam uma experiência enfadonha, confusa e apelativa.
This film is skillfully made, expertly directed, well acted, and pretty distasteful to me.
Takashi Miike has a style that definitely sets this one apart from the all of the American "stalker chick" films.
The grisly finale will undoubtedly linger in the memory but in the end, it just comes off as a case of too much, too late.
For those who can stomach its gory denouement, it's a disturbing cinematic experience that they won't soon forget.
The Audition DVD includes a director's audio commentary for the final half-hour. You may as well turn the commentary on—you'll be clamping your eyes shut for most of it anyway.
By the end I found myself feeling so creeped out it was Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer all over again.
It takes sexual tensions to a dreamlike extreme and has a Grand Guignol ending that should be upsetting to the faint of heart...
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