10 Movies That Are Totally Different By The End
9. Audition
How It Starts
Takashi Miike's filmography is so absurdly eclectic - spanning from Yakuza thriller to war epic to family comedy - that you can't ever be fully sure what you're about to see from him until the end credits have actually rolled.
His 1999 film Audition, for example, begins as a seemingly down-the-line romantic drama in which a lonely widower, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), holds a series of mock auditions in an attempt to find a new wife.
One gets the sense that Miike thoroughly enjoys toying with the audience throughout the film's first act, which is basically played entirely straight as an earnest melodrama.
How It Ends
The object of Shigeharu's affection, Asami (Eihi Shiina), certainly acts oddly throughout the film, though it isn't until the third act that Miike lets loose with a full-on, stomach-churning horror show.
Asami, who is revealed to be a jealously deranged psychopath, drugs Shigeharu with a paralytic agent, tortures him, and then uses a wire saw to cut off one of his feet. The nightmare scenario only ends when Shigeharu's son returns home and kicks Asami down the stairs to her death.
That's... quite the escalation from the bereavement dramedy Miike offered us in the opening 40-or-so minutes.