Have you ever seen a movie that makes you squirm from the sheer wrongness of its existence? No? Then you have obviously never seen Takashi Miike’s 1999 movie Audition.

This was my first taste of real Japanese horror. I had already seen the American remakes of Ju-on and Ringu, but not their original counterparts. The Grudge was mediocre, but The Ring rattled my bones enough that I wanted to see something more, something original to Japanese horror that we hadn’t attempted to copy yet. Netflix recommended this and another movie, Ichi the Killer. I chose this.

All I can say is that if you can watch this movie in its entirety without feeling the tendrils of abject terror and nausea grip you at least once, then you are made of a constitution far steelier than any I could imagine. Removing the fact that the story separate from the horror elements is highly disturbing, this is one effed-up movie, its horror smashing into you in wave after wave of stomach-churning imagery. The burlap bag. The bowl. The acupuncture needles. The final 15 minutes alone were enough to leave me far paler than my usual Irish pallor.

Shiver.

Will I ever watch this movie again? To paraphrase the great Whitney Houston, “Oh, hell to the no.” I didn’t even want to re-watch the trailer for this posting. Will I ever watch Ichi the Killer? I’m thinking that’s a big no as well. Then why on earth am I writing about Audition? Think of it as Loba’s personal version of The Ring: By passing along the terror and the nausea to you all, I’m cleansing my soul of some seriously deranged karmic damage.

Sorry about that. But, to be honest, I’d rather find Samara Morgan hiding out in my closet any day of the week over ever having a run-in with Asami Yamazaki and her burlap bag or her bowl full of…well…you’ll have to watch the movie to find that one out…