10 Great Horror Movies Made By Non-Horror Directors

Takashi Miike became a sensation in the early 2000s with Audition, a Japanese horror movie that shocked western audiences, disturbed critics at film festivals, and kick-started a whole new genre of horror that’s still going strong to this day: Torture Porn. Because of Audition’s success, Miike became the new name of world horror, earning himself a cameo in Eli Roth’s Hostel and an infamously horrific segment in the TV series Masters Of Horror.

The problem is that although Miike may be known for his horror movies in the west, in Japan he is known for over one hundred movies in different genres. He has made crime films, surreal comedies, children’s movies, video game adaptations, anime/manga adaptations, but the majority of his movies are Yakuza thrillers which are very popular in Japan. Throughout his career, Miike has only made two horror films: Audition and One Missed Call, the latter of which was remade by an American production company in 2008.

For Miike to be famous in the west just through Audition is a great disservice to his film career. Nonetheless, Audition is a great example of how extraordinary a filmmaker Miike is: it has all the hallmarks of his surreal creativity and perverted nature wrapped up in a great horror movie that’s well worth a watch. There’s a good reason as to why Quentin Tarantino included Audition in his list of ‘top 20 films released since 1992’.