Review of Audition (Uncut Special Edition)

Audition gets talked about a lot and is touted as one of the more disturbing pictures out there. It may have been a little too built up for me, cuz I wasn't really all that shocked by it, per-se. But it is a very good film, and what really struck me is that while watching the first half of it I felt like I was watching a non-genre japanese film for the first time in my life. You, know like I was watching a Japanese film that wasn't a horror flick, a samurai movie, or anime. Which I honestly don't think I've ever done before. And turns out, still haven't, cuz alas this IS a horror title in the end. But the story works, (mostly) and the characters are all well written and fleshed out. In fact, I was a little sad cuz I liked the characters in this film so much, but knew that some very bad things were eventually going to happen to them. Ultimately, like everything I've seen by Takashi Miike, I was a little put off by some of the directoral choices. Nonetheless, Audition is a memorizing piece of film most of the way through.