Friday, October 25, 2013

31 Days of Halloween - Day 25 - Movie 3



A lonely widower (Ryo Ishibashi) is persuaded to remarry. His producer friend sets up an audition for a fake movie so that possible candidates can be evaluated. He sets his sights on Asami (Eihi Shiina) a soft spoken, young, beauty, who the producer friend doesn't like. Everything she's revealed about herself either turns out to be untrue, or unconfirmable, with a trail of missing, or murdered persons in her wake.  Still the widower remains enamored of her, until she reveals to him first hand how unhinged she really is.

I've always wanted to push Audition (1999) onto unsuspecting friends with the caveat that they don't read anything about it before watching it. For the first half of the movie, it plays as a strait romantic drama, and the dark aspect of the movie comes into it slowly, and carefully revealed without being too specific until the intense, disturbing, and yet fascinatingly absorbing climax.  The acting is solid to exceptional across the board, and Eihi Shiina makes for a simultaneously perfect and unlikely source of terror. Telling more about this film would be spoiling it. It's a really classy, dark, disturbing movie.




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