12 Foreign Films That Show Hollywood How A Genre Film Should Be Done

Country: Japan

Genre: Horror

Plot: A widower tries to find a new wife at an audition. Unfortunately, he falls for a woman named Asami and gets caught up in a terrifying nightmare.

Audition is one of the very first torture-porn movies... and it's still the best. For the most part, the torture-porn genre has always been pretty tiresome, and the reason why Audition succeeds where most of these films failed is simple: the violence is actually disturbing.

Part of why this works so well is that the characters are fleshed out instead of being human targets; thanks to this, you'll actually care about what happens to them. In contrast, most American Torture-Porn films feature flat and unlikable characters who are simply there to be butchered.

Audition is an effective dramatic story about gender roles and masculinity rather than an immature gore-fest. Best of all, the horrible violence is a way in which to explore these themes of human darkness and it actually has a purpose rather than being shock for shock's sake.

The violence succeeds by being far less exhausting than Hollywood torture porn. Gore is minimal, there is an emphasis on psychological pain and the violence-free first half makes the second half far more disturbing thanks to the contrast.

Believe it or not, this flick from an enormously tiresome sub-genre is one of the most terrifying horror films ever.

Remake?

Nope. No American studio would tackle a film like this and the torture-porn genre has died out anyway.