Audition, a statement on the dark nature of the entertainment industry

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I must admit that I when I watched Takashi Miike’s 1999 horror drama Audition I expected something of a supernatural nature, but it turned out to be more sinister and eerie than I had anticipated. It is a sick rush of depravity and horror.

The storyline is simple enough. A widower with a teenage son stages a fake audition for a TV show to find a partner. He finds the woman of his dreams. However, she turns out to be the woman of his nightmares.

Ryo Ishibashi, who takes the role of male lead Shigeharu Aoyama, is quite convincing as a widower who has been out of the dating game too long with a strong moral compass. Then you have Eihi Shiina as Asami Yamazaki, the seemingly ideal candidate for a wife who turns out to hide a sinister and deadly secret.

I saw the film as social commentary on the pursuits of stardom and the damages it can cause an individual. It is a scatting statement on the treatment of women in the entertainment industry (including weird Japanese fetish porn).

While the film is Japanese and back as 1999, its commentary can be applied to the entertainment industry on a global scale. Of course, it could have been Miike’s way to exposing the truths only revealed recently with the Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby scandal and the #MeToo movement.

Audition can cause mental scars if you are not prepared for the sinister, but on a deeper note it brings to light a dark secret that the entertainment industry has sought to hide for decades.

I definitely recommend watching this film.

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