Audition (1999)

A thriller that holds its thrills until the last half-hour, then releases them in an agony-soaked finale, Audition implicates the viewer in the internalized misogyny inherent to most mainstream Romantic and Horror fare. The viewer is trained to feel for Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi): he is a widower whose child is nearly grown and will soon leave him behind. He begins to look for a girlfriend by using his influence as an advertisement director to set up auditions, try-outs for a fake film he devised as a ruse for selecting a prospective spouse at his benefit and ease.

However, when Asami, the woman he chooses, has different plans for Aoyama, director Takashi Miike’s purpose is made clear: the tropes and cliches that form the basis for most films and how their respective characters act as a result is harmful. If a real person set up auditions like Aoyama, he would be considered a pig; the actions of most cinematic males fulfills criteria for psychopathic behavior when people emulate those “moves” in reality. That is why Asami explicitly punishes Aoyama and implicitly the audience.

Audition leaves a bad taste in the audience’s mouth, a flavor that one could be forgiven for believing was injustice for Aoyama; rather, the taste is of the thousand injustices that tempered and tortured Asami’s life, completing the J-horror dish that Miike has concocted.