Takashii Miike's little freak out, Audition, gets the AV Club treatment:
My friend and current Esquire critic Mike D'Angelo once wrote that the ideal way to see Takashi Miike's Audition is to have a trusted friend that knows your tastes hand you an unlabeled copy in a paper bag, so you have no presuppositions about what it is and where it might be going. Sadly, just by including the film in Horror Month, I've already given some of the game away, and the majority of posters, box covers, and publicity photos do likewise. Still, I would strongly advise iron-stomached newcomers to Audition to take leave of this column now and salvage at least some of the surprises this nasty little film has to offer. And though you won't have a clean slate, you can at least appreciate what the experience might have been like if the DVD had arrived on your doorstep in a blank sleeve, like a gift from a mean-spirited prankster.
For the first 47 minutes, those familiar with Miike's work are actually in for a bigger shock than what happens in the final third. Though his output has slowed of late, Miike used to turn out films at a blistering six-a-year pace, and his unmistakable mix of extreme gore, surrealism, and black comedy put him at the vanguard of the emerging J-horror movement. The first Miike I ever saw was 2001's Ichi The Killer, and I remember vividly how it conditioned me to appreciate it: For the first few reels, I had to fight the urge to flee in revulsion, so disturbed was I by sights like a naked man suspended from the ceiling with hooks, while scalding hot oil was poured over his elongated body. But then, to my astonishment, I wound up laughing at the sheer outrageousness of it, and I became convinced that Miike had wanted to get me there all along. (As a symbol of his sick sense of humor, the press was issued a promotional barf bag.) Here was a true enfant terrible, and as subsequent films confirmed, someone who was eager to screw around with genres (e.g. the macabre musical The Happiness Of The Katakuris, or the spaghetti Western Sukiyaki Western Django) and keep topping himself.
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