Brains, Blood, Boomsticks, & Broods

Well there is one thing for certain about Audition. When you’re finished watching it you won’t have any question about Takashi Miike’s relationship with women. And if you managed to catch Imprint from the Masters of Horror series you’ll be certain of these adjectives: elusive, cruel, vile, vindictive, manipulative, primal, torturous, and methodical. Not exactly Hallmark’s words of the month for their Valentine cards, and they probably won’t get Gloria Steinem’s stamp of approval either. However they paint a violently vilifying and visceral portrait of tortured souls in combat for the validation of their perspective.

It would be degrading to call this the Fatal Attraction of our generation. However, I’ll admit to initially making the comparison. The complications of the female character run deep and to say she is a multidimensional character would be an understatement since we are left with so many question about her past. (You can tell we didn’t have a b-grade movie night by the fact we’re even discussing character development and plot). And the male lead so desires her to be who he wants her to that he looks past all the clues that point to a suspicious past.

However, this blog isn’t about dissecting movies. It’s about fun, campy, and sometimes crappy. Audition probably didn’t hit any of those categories. It was interesting, craftedt, and included moments of head turning visuals. I’ll say it: Audition most definitely does not meet the parameters of schlock. However it did have it’s moments, where if your sense of humor is twisted enough you’ll find yourself laughing. It’s definitely worth watching, but not when you’re looking for campy, light plot, easy to follow. Audition is developed and involves a fair amount of attention (subtitles included and necessary).

It has: flying feet; ingenious prosthetic feet; sharp wires; a continued needle fetish; edible vomit; dinosaur pickup lines; “deeper, deeper”; hallucinogenic, telepathic, body-numbing scotch additive; and another reason why asian horror is more twisted than American horror

It doesn’t have: a fast pace, a disclaimer about harming animals, correct use of acupuncture points, a perceptive main character, or a reason why that man (you’ll know) hasn’t starved himself to death

3.5/5 bound bags or piles of VHS tapes (your choice but make sure you only love one)

This entry was posted on 11/16/2009 at 16:10 and is filed under 3 Brains with tags American Horror, Apocalyptic, B-Grade, Blood, Campbell, Campy, Chainsaws, Cheesy, Comedy, Demons, Directors, Flies, Fucked up, Fulci, Fun, Gore, Graphic, Grave Digger, Guns, Guts, Headless Corpse, Horror, Japanese Horror, Knives, Machetes, Massacre, Monsters, Movie Reviews, Movies, Nightmares, Raimi, Romero, Schlock, Sex, Silly, Special Effects, Strippers, Tequila, Transgender, Troma, Undead, Vampires, Virgins, Zombies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.