Audition

I understand perfectly why it is famous. I understand that at the time it could feel like a bomb inside Japanese horror and that many people remember it for its final stretch. But my experience was different. While watching it, I kept thinking that perhaps I had arrived too late to a film explained, quoted and mythologized so much that the blow could no longer hit me with the force I expected. I did not think it was silly, far from it, but neither did I see the unquestionable masterpiece so often described.

What I find most interesting is its game of false normality. For much of the running time it almost seems like a sad drama about loneliness, the desire to rebuild a life and the rather questionable way in which a widower tries to find a partner. The idea of organizing a kind of sentimental casting is already sick before explicit horror appears. The film places the protagonist in a comfortable, almost kind position, but underneath there is a murky male gaze: choosing, observing, discarding, turning women into candidates and confusing companionship with possession. There is real discomfort there.

The problem is that this first part, which many value as patience and construction, felt too cold to me. I understand that slowness is part of the mechanism, that the film wants to make you drowsy before pulling the floor from under your feet, but I did not always feel tension building. There were moments when it felt more like waiting than threat. The protagonist’s loneliness and his search for a partner are interesting, yes, but they did not grip me with the emotional density I would have needed.

When Asami enters, everything improves. There is something in her stillness, in her apparent fragility and in that way of seeming almost suspended that is truly unsettling. She does not need big gestures for you to sense that something is not right. The actress conveys a mixture of sweetness, emptiness and danger that is probably the best thing in the film. Her presence introduces a crack in the tone, as if the romantic story were slowly being contaminated by a nightmare that had been waiting from the beginning. There I do recognize Miike’s talent for making the everyday start to feel poisonous.

I am also interested in the way horror does not suddenly appear out of nowhere, but as a distorted response to a chain of damage, desires, lies and expectations. The film is more uncomfortable than that. There is abuse, male fantasy, vulnerability, resentment and a violence that seems born from very damaged places. That complexity explains part of its prestige. It is not a simple blood festival; it tries to make the viewer doubt the place from which they are watching.

But even accepting all that, I never fully connected. The famous final stretch struck me as strong, of course, but perhaps less shocking than I expected after so much legend. It is unpleasant, it has images that are hard to forget and a very specific, almost surgical cruelty, but it did not unsettle me as much as I assumed it would. Maybe because I already knew something brutal was going to arrive. Maybe because the film’s reputation has turned its surprise into a compulsory appointment. Or maybe because I need more than a change of tone and an extreme scene to feel truly conquered.

Visually, it has powerful moments, especially when it leaves the realistic surface and enters more feverish, confused and almost hallucinated areas. That is where a stranger, freer and more disturbing film appears. But I also found it uneven. Some ellipses and breaks in logic have the force of a nightmare; others pushed me out. That mixture of drama, bitter satire, psychological horror and grotesque explosion is certainly bold, but it did not always feel fully satisfying.

I think my distance has a lot to do with expectations. If I had seen it knowing nothing, perhaps the impact would have been greater. Watching it after years of cult status, enormous praise and labels like “horror masterpiece”, I found an interesting, daring and personal film, but also a slow, somewhat cold one and less emotionally devastating than promised. I value its importance, its influence and its ability to hide one film inside another. But one thing is recognizing what it represents and another is feeling that it has gone through you.

In the end, I remain somewhere in the middle. I respect the film more than I enjoy it. I understand its fame, but I do not fully share it. I find it intelligent in its construction, unsettling in its view of male desire and effective in some moments of physical and psychological horror. But it also left me waiting for a greater shake, a deeper emotion or a disturbance that did not depend so much on its reputation. For me it is an important cult film, yes, but not a complete experience. Admirable at times, uncomfortable at others, and much less impactful than I expected.