Audition: Let’s Have a Call for All Killers

I was in a state of shock and awe after this film. I thought I had found my favorite horror films, but Audition really blew those out of the water. This perfect balance of horror and troubling thriller really sets the bar high for any films after 1999. Takashi Miike has made a masterpiece of a mindf@#$k with Audition. And the fact that Rob Zombie, John Landis, and Eli Roth said this film was difficult to watch, it has to be golden.

Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is a recently widowed movie producer. He’s been quite distant and lonely lately, and his son, Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki) has noticed it. Encouraging his dad to at the very least start dating again, Shigeharu turns to his

The audition begins. This is one of those other shots they held really long so you couldn’t see her face. Chilling.

friend, Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), a fellow movie maker for ideas. This is where he has a stroke of genius. In proposing a new movie idea, these two scoundrels will have an audition (hey, there’s the movie title!) for the leading lady. Shigeharu can choose his top 30 and narrow it down from there, giving the lead to the best actress, but he can claim his favorite choice for his wife.

Ballin’ disturbing images.

Feeling slightly uneasy about this, Shigeharu goes into it half-assed. He dawdles around until he finds a young woman who stops his heart still. Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) is a former ballerina with a very high guard and a delicate personality. He tragic past and broken dreams intoxicate Shigeharu and he must have her at all costs. After a few dates, Shigeharu starts to notice something different about her. And once she disappears, he digs up a past he never wanted to find.

I have to say it, this is a dope ass film. It’s such a twisted film with a plot that leaves you with no idea what’s going on. What people talk about is the torture scene at the end. Needles, dismemberment, blood, this scene houses the entire NR rating for the

A feeling of unsettling fear…

whole film. People have left disgusted and sickened, but that’s what would have kept me in the film. I’ll admit it, I love torture and horror. Anything that makes people, as an audience, feel unclean is wonderful. For someone to go into a movie like this and realize something about their sensibilities by the time they leave is an experience worth having. It taps into our minds and shows us just how terrible the world can be. But shouldn’t be.

I was impressed with a lot of things about this movie. Eihi Shiina’s performance in this film was chilling and horrific. She seems to be such a nice little girl, but her unemotional, uncaring side is what frightens people. It makes people feel uncomfortable with how relentless and completely honest she is as a character. She hypnotizes the bugs into her web and leaves them there to die by her fangs.

You’ll never wanna guess what happens…

A lot of the film has these extremely long held camera shots in it. The action will stay on one angle and deliver a whole piece of dialogue without moving. You’re anticipating some movement (like you would with most films) but it doesn’t come yet. It waits, and waits, and waits until you feel uncomfortable. The whole movie is made to feel unsettling. It’s a tortuous waiting game of when will the knife fall, until it does (and only in the last 15 minutes).

The surreal quality at the end of the film also really spoke to me. You fade in and out of the torture scene, you see past events as Shigeharu couldn’t have seen them. The past is rewritten. You lose all sense of control and awareness as the drugs settle into Shigeharu. You completely give your control over to Asami, something that is unsettling for people to do, even in real life. You lose yourself to this poisonous flower and have no feeling of waking up. There is a bit of a jarring from this final scene that didn’t need to happen. No happy ending was necessary, and yet Takashi Miike allowed it to happen. It would’ve had such a sweetly unsatisfying ending if it had the villain succeeds ending…

But, all in all, this movie delivers on a horror lovers level and a thriller/psychological level. You feel off either way after you’ve watched this. And that’s what horror movies like this set out to do from the start. No wonder this has a cult

WHAT’S IN THE BAG?!?!?

following. It should have. Asian filmmakers know how to do the horror genre right, and this is no exception. This is the movie that made the rule. 9.4 out of 10.

 

Prometheus: Astounding

Astounding is the only word I can think of and use to describe this movie. It has stunning visual effects (didn’t see it in 3-D, didn’t need to), gut wrenching gore and horror, and this air of mystery that hangs over the whole film. It is a part of the Alien series (5th installment) but at the same time it is set apart completely as its own film. A great cast was selected and an amazing backstory/ prequel was born and thus named Prometheus.

In this epic tale of just what happened before the Alien films, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) are two archaeologists who have stumbled upon something fantastic. In different locations all around the world,

It all begins here.

spanning centuries, the same symbol of a gigantic man pointing to a specific star region, as if to say “Come find us.” Interested in this speculation, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) finances the whole thing with his massive amounts of dough and creates a ship, named Prometheus.

Janek and Vickers. Opposites attract?

Piloted by Janek (Idris Elba) and watched over by the android David (Michael Fassbender), after two years of flying, the crew lands on the distant planet the star map told them to come to. Under Meredith Vickers’ (Charlize Theron) watchful eye, the crew must find what they’re looking for, even if what they’re looking for is no longer around. What they find is more than they bargained for, and the must stop the deadly trap from making its ways to Earth.

Where should I begin in my shining review of Prometheus? Well, I think that finally technology in special effects has made its way up to Ridley Scott’s vision of what he has wanted the Alien films to look like. It’s space agey, cold and

An unknown marvel awaits.

clinical, and full of wonder and horror all at the same time. The planet storm was breathtaking, the creatures and surreal caverns were creepy and mammoth sized, this movie incorporated everything you wanted to see in our race discovering a planet in… 70 years.

Noomi Rapace, giving her heart and soul to Prometheus, as only she can.

This strong cast of actors all did their jobs in developing their roles in what you would expect of a spaceship crew. Idris Elba did a great job as the ship’s commander. Slightly minor, but he didn’t take shit from anybody as you would expect. Charlize Theron (in one of the only roles I applaud her in) plays the oddly robotic and bitchy overseer of the entire operation. She tows the line between sci-fi amazonian and unemotional human in a very convincing performance. Michael Fassbender stole the show again as the android, fully immersing himself in what Theron had to hint at. His intrigued and distanced character embodies what sci-fi novelists and movie makers have seen as a human robot for years (think Ian Holm in the original, but add the quirkiness of Jude Law in A.I.) And then there’s Noomi Rapace. This Swedish actress from The Dragon Tatoo series put her heart and soul into the part. She tired herself out, did some terrible yet necessary things to her body, and did it all with a British accent she had a coach for. Seeing her dive into a character that has to deal with all these terrible revelations was both disparaging and inspiring. She didn’t let what was happening put her down or stop her from her end goal.

The only true scene I wanted to see in 3-D.

One person I was particularly impressed with was Guy Pearce. I’ve loved him since The Time Machine remake (and Memento, of course) and think he was born to play in sci-fi films. His air of bravado and poise resonates in entitled sci-fi characters. And not to mention he’s playing an old man for 15 minutes of the film that you would barely recognize. And a great little cameo from another one of my favorite actors (since Watchmen), Patrick Wilson.

The music was orchestratedly stunning. At all the moments you feel fear or exhilaration in this newly discovered planet, it fills in with the proper soundtrack. Much as Gabe would describe it as a soundscape

No words can describe it.

that fills in all the spots of your imagination, this soundtrack did that for me. (Was it similar to the other Alien films? Let me know.)

Another thing that was so great about this film (haven’t I said enough?) is that you don’t have to be a die hard Alien fan to watch this movie. This movie itself can get you hooked in (being a prequel and all). I’ve only seen the first Alien and the AVP series (always been more of a Predator fan, sorry), and this movie makes me want to watch all of them. This movie tackles the mythology and world of a film that is also a film! Something made up and fantasized analyzing something else in the same manner? That’s wild! And I thought it was so well done and handled from such a organic and basic place that it made itself into this mythological God that could spark films and analysis for years to come. Until it becomes a reality.

… What started it all.

With all this ranting and raving about the film, why haven’t you X-ed out of my blog and already started up your car to go see this in theaters? You need to see this in order to boost the ratings and maybe someday prove that a genre other than drama can win the Oscar for best movie of the year. Because I would argue that this film is in the running for 2012. Just saying. I have no complaints and was mesmerized from the start of the film. Go see it. Now. 10 out of 10.