Arrow Video: Audition (1999) - Reviewed

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Images courtesy of Arrow Video

Back in October of 2014, the Movie Sleuth’s Michelle Kisner and I tag teamed Takashi Miike’s 1999 gut wrenching shocker Audition (which you can read here) for an ongoing series every Halloween dedicated to horror films called 31 Days of Hell.  One of the few Miike films to really frighten me in an uncompromising gradual foray from romantic intrigue into violence, it’s the kind of film with the capacity to end friendships or the worst possible date movie on the face of the Earth.  Over the years, the film has seen various distribution deals ranging from the non-anamorphic American Cinematheque slipcase edition and later Lionsgate on an anamorphic DVD release.  Since then, the folks at Arrow Video well aware of the less than stellar quality releases of the film across DVD and Blu-ray took it upon themselves to bring to international and domestic viewers the definitive home video release edition of this still startling and searing film. 

 
Circa 2026, Arrow Video have circled back following their UK exclusive steelbook release (which I still have) and have now given Takashi Miike’s mean and mad grisly transgressor of a film the full blown 4K UHD treatment.  Utilizing the original Super 16mm camera negative supervised and approved by Miike’s longtime cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto and including three audio mixes including the original lossless stereo, 4.0 surround and DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound with plentiful extras ported over from the previous editions, we can safely say this is the definitive penultimate home video disc release of Takashi Miike’s blistering masterwork for the 2160p generation.

 
For a film that’s been misrepresented on home video for many years with the degraded Super 16mm video presentation rife with heavier than usual grain levels, Audition finally gets the top to bottom treatment it justly deserves though some fans will express dismay Arrow Video has chosen to skip a Blu-ray upgrade or counterpart for this edition.  While home video boutique labels are starting to jettison Blu-rays in favor of doing just a 4K disc and maybe a digital release alongside it, those who have made the jump will want to upgrade their copies of Audition immediately as the work of Takashi Miike including his digital videotape work is starting to gravitate over towards the high definition medium.  Audition is still too scary and cruel for most people and I still get dirty looks to this day whenever the title is mentioned, but for what its worth Arrow Video have knocked this one out of the park in a stellar special collector’s edition of quite frankly one of the most terrifying Japanese horror films of all time.

--Andrew Kotwicki