10 Moments That Literally Stopped Horror Movies
8. Audition - Waking Up
Audition takes everything that you took to be true about the film and its direction and then, at the very last minute, spins it another very weird way.
Prior to this moment we’ve established that Asami is a serial killer at worst and a psycho at best. We learn she has been getting ‘revenge’ on men who have done her wrong by either killing or drastically injuring them, and it seems that our central man Shigeharu Aoyama is next on her hit list.
Why is he next? For the heinous crime of keeping a photo of his late wife in his home.
Asami drugs and tortures Aoyama, seemingly on the path to finish him off when suddenly it all just stops, and Aoyama wakes up in bed.
He seemingly awakens at an earlier point in the plot, rewriting what happens in a way that eventually sees Asami dying at the foot of his staircase. Employing the oh-so-classic trope of ‘it was all a dream’, this wake-up moment certainly stops audiences in their tracks.