A director best known for dull, overpraised gangster melodramas and over the top Manga adaptations, Takashi Miike delivers his low-key masterpiece with Audition, a movie that in the tradition of all the best horror films creeps up on you. When a lonely widower attempts to begin dating, he uses a filmmaker friend to audition prospective girlfriends, and eventually settles for Asami (Eihi Shiina), unaware she has a past thats best described as complicated. But if you think this is going to be a psychodrama of the Fatal Attraction variety, guess again Glenn Close never put needles in Michael Douglass eyes or displayed a penchant for amputation. When first shown in Japan, Audition caused walkouts, with one outraged female viewer telling the director to his face that he was a very sick person. If you think that sounds like a recommendation, buy the DVD.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
