WHAT SCARES ME
by Eric Lindbom
Audition FIVE SNAKES OUT OF FIVE
As Halloween looms, it’s an apt season to remember our fears. Not just childhood scares like the monster in the closet or under the bed (my Mom gave my brother a Wiffle bat and said brain it!) but phobias that linger. One of mine is driving at night especially (locals will get this) merging from a complete stop on the 110 entrance heading to Pasadena.
When considering horror movies, I’m as susceptible to jump scares and shock images as anybody but the effect is as ephemeral as getting zapped by an old timer joy buzzer. The heart races for a sec but then comes relief.
What really spooks me at horror movies is creeping dread and the sense that something REALLY bad is coming. When a filmmaker keeps the powder dry with a low body count and a methodical pace I don’t get impatient. Instead, the hairs on the nape of my neck start humming.
There are many terror flicks and horror adjacent thrillers that do this number on me – Ti West’s HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, Karyn Kusama’s THE INVITATION and Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING spring to mind.
Forced at guillotine blade to pick one, it’s easily Japanese director Takashi Miike’s AUDITION. The stunningly prolific 64-year-old Miike has directed 100 (!) works for film, television and video and many shred the sex and violence envelope. AUDITION is something else, building with the drip, drip drip of a leaky faucet until its devastating finale.
Based on a novel by Ryu Murakami, it implicates the audience as its main terrorized character isn’t some complete innocent but complicit in his grim situation through a romantic quirk. Aoyama (a sympathetic Ryo Ishibashi) is a television producer mourning his deceased wife for seven years. At the behest of his young son, he decides to take the plunge and marry again. Rather than video date, a producer friend suggests they set up a phony audition process for a fake movie so they can question various women. Despite Aoyama’s matrimonial intent, there’s a funny male gaze element surrounding the amusing try outs. As with most scenarios based on a falsehood (white lie or no) the consequences have teeth.
Aoyama meets Asami an age inappropriate former ballet dancer (Eihi Shiina) and becomes entranced with her despite the warnings of psyched out acquaintances who pick up on her strange vibes. Aoyama reminds us of other tragic obsessives such as James Stewart’s necrophiliac cop in VERTIGO (who tries turning a woman into the Doppelganger of a dead lover) and the doomed curious husband searching for answers for his missing wife in George Sluizer’s THE VANISHING.
Miike gives us glimpses into Asami’s dark past including an undulating canvas bag in her dark apartment which may hold an imprisoned, tortured former lover. The harder Aoyama pursues this mystery woman, who admits she’s damaged from family abuse, the more our sense of unease accumulates.
The challenge of a slow burn horror or thriller is whether or not the finale will do justice to the foreboding or dissipate like a popcorn fart. The less you know about AUDITION the better. All I’ll say about the final reels are they’re absolutely terrifying and, for some viewers, too tough to tolerate. This is masterful work that demands to be seen with a rep house audience if possible. And yes, it scared the bejesus out of me!
Eric Lindbom is a hardcore horror buff with a strong stomach, weaned on the Universal classics from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s written film and/or music reviews for City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, LA WEEKLY, Request magazine and Netflix. He co-edits triggerwarningshortfiction.com, a site specializing in horror, fantasy and crime short stories with illustrations by co-editor John Skewes. He lives in Los Angeles.
