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By Meg Shields · Posted on August 6th, 2021

Welcome to The Queue — your day by day distraction of curated online video content material sourced from across the world wide web. Today, we’re seeing a video essay on how Takashi Miike’s motion picture Audition manipulates its audience with genre conventions.


7 many years following the loss of life of his wife, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is hounded by the exact, biting query: “when will you re-marry?” His film producer mate, Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura) devises the best pre-Tinder approach: to maintain a phony audition for young girls to audition for the “part” of Aoyama’s new spouse. In the course of the casting connect with, Auoyama is smitten by Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina). Aoyama doesn’t treatment that the references on her résumé are “missing” or that she seems to “leave a trail of severed physique parts” in her wake. Dashing into a partnership never ever hurt anyone, ideal? Proper?

It goes with out declaring that the status of the motion picture Audition proceeds it. Within J-Horror, and even the horror style extra broadly, Audition is acknowledged for pushing grotesque boundaries and forcing even the hardest viewer to partially address their eyes. Make no blunder, that standing is very well-acquired.

But Audition is significantly from the scandalizing fright fest you may well count on. As the online video essay beneath aspects, director Takashi Miike amplifies the film’s horrific impression by dabbling in the cinematic language of decidedly un-horrific genres. Specifically: melodrama and comedy. The result is a film as enigmatic and shape-shifting as Asami herself, ensuing in a regular game of misdirection in between Miike and the viewer.

Good warning: The subsequent video clip essay does not involve any challenging spoilers for Audition. But it does talk about gentle components of the film’s plot and above-arching tonal shifts. If you have not presently, we recommend viewing Miike’s movie very first.

View “Audition – How to Manipulate The Audience”:

Who created this?

This video essay on genre anticipations in Takashi Miike’s film Audition is by You Have Been Watching Films. United Kingdom-centered writer Oliver Bagshaw generates the channel, generating online video essays on an assortment of films, from cult to classic strains of cinema history. You can subscribe to their YouTube channel listed here.

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Relevant Subjects: Horror, The Queue

Meg Shields is the humble farm boy of your dreams and a senior contributor at Movie School Rejects. She at the moment operates a few columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She is also a curator for Just one Perfect Shot and a freelance author for use. Meg can be discovered screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter right here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).

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