A relentlessly disturbing tale which makes the body-horror of Croenenberg and the sadistic wit of Lynch resemble a Barney Christmas special, Audition makes for easily the most horrifying cinematic experience since the aftermath of Sissy Spacek’s prom night in Carrie.

Shigeharu Aoyama (Ishibashi) is the owner of a Tokyo-based video production company, and a widower raising his tenage son Shigehiko (Sawaki) on his own. At 42, he’s lonely, and even his son is constantly on his case to get remarried. Seeking the advice of colleague and fellow producer Yoshikawa, Aoyama is advised to resurrect an abandoned feature-film project and hold auditions for a female lead, while actually selecting suitable spousal candidates. A fundamentally decent bloke, Aoyama feels guilty about the ruse, but he casts aside his doubts after reading a melancholic cover-letter from one applicant, the childlike 24-year-old ex-ballerina Asami (former Benetton model Shiina).

After they meet, a tentative but tender romance begins to blossom, and despite Yoshikawa’s warnings that none of Asami’s references check out (and his discovery of ever-increasing numbers of missing persons in the girl’s past) Aoyama is far too smitten to care. All the while, Asami sits in her flat staring maniacally at the phone awaiting each call, but it really isn’t until one sees the large moving sack behind her that it becomes apparent something is terribly amiss…

From this point, Audition imperceptibly changes gear from a gentle chamber-piece romance – imbued with traditional Japanese restraint – to an ever-escalating descent into the kind of sadistic tortures Dr. Josef Mengele would never have dreamed humanity capable of.

While the film remains resolutely ambigious as to whether this onslaught of horrors is real, or merely a manifestation of Aoyama’s guilt concerning his male-menopausal desire for a 24-year-old, this blurring of status doesn’t seem to matter overmuch during a closing twenty-minute sequence of scarcely conceivable savagery which doesn’t allow for a minute’s repose. The sequence, mirroring Aoyama’s fate, traps the audience in anightmarish barrage from which they can never resurface, at least not without mental scars that will take some time to heal.

This is undoubtedly, then, a complex and quite brilliant work which lends itself to multiple readings (is it an allegory of feminist revenge on Japan’s patriarchical values, or an acknowledgememt of Japan’s diseased body politic?)

But ultimately, it’s complusive, truly unmissable horror-heaven for all those who felt the genre had cashed in its chips with the parodic antics of the Scream franchise, and mandatory viewing if you’re sure you can handle it. Otherwise, steer several miles clear.