This Beloved J-Horror Movie's Shocking Twist Had Audience Members Scolding The Director

There are gnarly horror movies, and then there's Takashi Miike's "Audition." The 1999 film was based on the 1997 Ryū Murakami novel of the same name, following widower Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) as he tries to find a new wife by creating a fake movie audition and then romancing one of the actresses who auditions. The only problem is that the young woman, the mysterious Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), isn't exactly who she appears to be. The former ballerina seems sweet and a little shy, but in reality, she's a stone-cold killer. While there are plenty of movies about killer women, "Audition" is so shocking because for most of its runtime, it's a fairly slow-going romantic drama that only truly turns horrific in its back half.

While there's a pretty good indicator about halfway through that all's not right with Asami when we see her rocking on the floor waiting for a phone call, and then her laundry bag moves because one of her victims is inside, there's nothing that can quite prepare audiences for when Asami turns the tables on Shigeharu and starts torturing him. In fact, it's so deeply disturbing that some film festival audience members walked out, and one little old lady allegedly told Miike he was a sicko to his face. "Audition" is the scariest non-American horror movie of all time, according to science, but is it really that upsetting? 

Even though "Audition" is over 25 years old, I'd be loath to spoil the exact ending because it's so good, but suffice to say, Asami's capture and torture of Shigeharu is pretty darn gruesome. (Hints: there are acupuncture needles and razor wire involved.) Director Takashi Miike was careful with how he meted out the violence in the film, which makes the brutal finale that much nastier, but it was just too much for some audiences. In a retrospective looking back on the film's release for BFI, Miike revealed that one audience member actually gave him a bit of a fright with her reaction: 

"I still remember the expression of the elderly lady who went out to find me in the darkness of the movie theatre when I was watching with a customer at a film festival and said, 'You are sick!' To be honest, I was more scared of her expression than my movie."

While Miike isn't fully to blame for the nastiness of "Audition" because the movie is a fairly accurate adaptation of the novel, there are a few tiny added details that make it even more unsettling. Honestly, the funniest part of all is that Miike himself isn't even that big of a horror fan and considers himself a bit of a "scaredy cat." Hey — maybe being afraid helps a creative make things even scarier. If that's the case, the woman's reaction could have helped inspire even more Miike movie madness.