Audition is one of the most notorious 1990s horror movies that I had yet to catch up with. While it might be shameful that it took me this long, my delay allowed me an opportunity. I can approach it with an advantage that English speakers lacked during the years it was building up cult status. Namely, I have read the 1997 Murakami Ryū novel it is based on, which wasn’t published in English until 2009.

For those not in the know, the slow-burn Japanese horror film follows lonely widower Aoyama Shigeharu (Ishibashi Ryô). Seven years after his wife’s death, he decides he should find a replacement. With the encouragement of a friend in the media industry, he holds an audition for a faux film. Among those vying to play a character modeled after Aoyama’s ideal wife is Yamazaki Asami (Shiina Eihi). Aoyama is instantly smitten with Asami, to the point of ignoring the many red flags and inconsistencies in her backstory. Long story short: This does not go well for him.

How Does Audition Compare to the Book?

First things first: Audition is better than the book. The texts share a similar structure, but director Miike Takashi imbues the cold and dry novel with more spirit. His visual and editorial sensibility is entirely beyond reproach and frequently downright gorgeous. Every element of the movie’s construction serves the story’s slow, inexorable slide into madness.

There is a certain off-kilter vibe throughout, partially thanks to a prime selection of unusual camera angles. Nevertheless, there is always a sense that things are getting worse and worse. The color scheme and cutting rhythm especially keep incrementally escalating until Audition hits its explosive finale. It’s an extraordinarily patient film, engrossing you with its plot and characters while slowly lowering you into boiling water. By the time things get extreme, it’s too late: you’re already locked in.

Some Narrative Elements in Audition Can Be Frustrating

While Audition is a gorgeous, impeccably mounted work, the one way it fails the novel is by lacking its straightforwardness. The book is hardly a great work of feminist literature, but the movie doesn’t evoke its themes quite as clearly.

Its ideas about how men and women treat one another are sometimes delivered with bracing clarity. I’m particularly partial to the way that the movie depicts the gaze. Almost never does Audition present a close-up image of what Aoyama and Asami are looking at. Instead, the camera focuses almost entirely on whoever is doing the looking, for a downright uncomfortable amount of time. This is an exhilarating visual way to explore the power dynamics between the two characters.

However, the movie muddles the story a little too much to present a coherent angle on what’s going on. It is possible (even probable) that I am being hopelessly Western by raising this issue. However, there’s a roughly 15-minute dream sequence that precedes Audition’s violent finale, and I found it to be film-breakingly flawed. The sequence, which is presented as Aoyama’s drugged-out hallucination, delivers too much load-bearing narrative content for its own good. It answers many mysteries about Asami’s backstory in a manner that’s too roundabout and unclear. Has Aoyama somehow psychically tapped into Asami’s point of view? Is his dreaming mind making this all up?

I can see why this lack of distinction can serve as a metaphor. Men objectify women, they see what they want to see, and so on. However, the finale lacks heft because our understanding of Asami lies almost entirely in the realm of imagination and possibility. Why not place a little more of that backstory into Aoyama’s real-life investigations of her past? This would allow her to remain mysterious while offering some helpful glimpses into her potential motives.

Instead, the whole thing ultimately feels kind of hollow and pointless to me. Plus, the dream sequence telegraphs a few great moments from the following 20 minutes, robbing them of their shock value. Also, it murders the pacing. This long stretch of tonal noodling comes precisely when you think the movie’s about to shoot into the stratosphere. I found it to be a real bummer, all around.

Is Audition Worth Watching?

Despite finding Audition’s legendary finale to be underwhelming, I’m still entirely glad that I finally watched it. It’s an almost entirely engrossing experience, presented with great skill by one of Japan’s most shockingly prolific filmmakers. Nearly every shot turns up something fresh and unexpected. And, to be fair, the finale is still pretty great. It should have been better served by the preceding scene, but it is still painfully brutal all these years later.

Plus, Shiina Eihi’s performance is perfectly calibrated. The movie straight-up doesn’t work without her. She knows that slow and steady’s the way to win this race, never going big when she can avoid it. With perfectly calibrated understatement, she seizes your attention every time she’s onscreen. She slowly and methodically draws the tension as tight as a razor-sharp wire saw.

All in all, it’s still pretty damn solid. I wouldn’t want one big quibble to get in the way of other Audition virgins checking it out. Consider this a big recommend.

From Sixteen Candles to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, John Hughes’s first four films as a director defined a generation. These films gave our parents a hollow optimism that things would be better than they were; rose-tinted glasses and all that. While many loved the work of John Hughes, some felt the hollow optimism of pretty white people getting their way, as the camera pulls out to then roll credits on the idyllic happiness that few of them would ever experience in their lives. For those Hughes haters, they had Heathers. (Though the box office numbers would say otherwise! Buh dum tiss.)

Veronica Sawyer, J.D., and the Cost of Wanting to Be Seen

Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) longs to form an identity of her own, while stuck in the shadow of the Heathers: Heather Chandler (Kim Walker), Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk), and Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty). When Veronica meets J.D. (Christian Slater), she finally gets that chance. The quick-talking, five-dollar-word-using J.D. is just the man to get this impressionable teen to step out of her comfort zone. Literally. As the bodies start piling up, the town is concerned about a potential suicide epidemic. But Veronica knows all too well that the path she’s going down could easily end up in her own death.

I had not heard of Heathers until my senior year of high school. Knowing that I was a sad loner, my physics teacher and calculus teacher (husband and wife) somewhat took me under their wing and gave me a pretty in-depth film education. They showed me Tarantino, Heathers, and tons of other wonderful films that helped form who I am today. At the time, I was awestruck by Heathers. I loved its dark humor and deeply appreciated the message of being your own person. And, surprisingly, it still holds up incredibly well in 2026.

Generational Conformity and Why Heathers Still Resonates

While there are many criticisms to be made about Gen Z/Alpha, I find that many of these same criticisms were just as valid when I was younger. When I was in middle school, skinny jeans were all the rage. That would soon transform into the Mumford and Sons hipster era of the late aughts, early 10s. But we found our individuality in our similar conformity. Whereas the Z/Alphas of today blindly accept their conformities and are slowly devolving into a formless blob of nothingness. Heathers could easily be an antidote for youngsters of today. (Sans all the killing, etc.)

To me, the whole theme of Heathers is finding healthy expressions to be yourself and stepping away from the conformity of what it means to be “cool”. Veronica has all the trappings to be her own, unique person, but gets stuck in the mundanity of being seen as cool by the cool kids. Every high school has those handful of people who SOMEHOW become the ‘it’ kids. But where are they now? In my case, most of them refused to leave my small town and are stuck in the ‘good ole days’. Huh. What a life.

Self-Awareness as a Double-Edged Sword

One of my least favorite things about John Hughes films is the lack of individuality many of the characters have. And those who are distinct individuals are still incredibly one-note. Veronica is an incredibly deep character who, initially, succeeds when she’s catalyzed to be herself by J.D. Unfortunately, J.D. has ulterior motives that Veronica doesn’t notice until it’s too late. It’s interesting to watch this film as an adult and not a barely self-aware teen. The writing is on the wall with J.D. A normal person would immediately see the red flags in J.D.’s personality, but Veronica truly feels seen for the first time and allows herself to fall down this incredibly self-destructive path. It’s almost as if writer Daniel Waters is making a statement that being too self-aware is just as harmful a drug as implicit conformity.

The Mask and the Mirror in Heathers

There is more than just “conformity bad” to this film. Director Michael Lehmann brings layers of commentary to a film that could have easily fallen victim to ideas that would have been too grand for a lesser director. One of the greatest visual elements of this film is a small moment after the death of Heather Chandler. Feeling conflicted about using the trust between her and Heather Chandler, Veronica has a moment of self-realization that she doesn’t even know who she is anymore. This is visualized by a mask that hangs from Heather Chandler’s mirror.

In this moment, Veronica is sitting with her back to the mirror. Her face is tilted to the left, ever so slightly, while she looks at J.D. The mask that hangs on the mirror is perfectly hanging over the back of her head. She feels two-faced. How could she have just helped kill her best friend? Does she even know who she is anymore? Just how far will she take this? This single moment visually shows more of Veronica’s struggle than John Hughes did in the entirety of his collective works.

Why Heathers Still Holds Up Today

Again, sans the killing, Heathers is a film that still holds up incredibly well (and minus four uses of the f-slur). The jokes land, the commentary lands, and the satisfaction of some awful people’s deaths still lands. If there’s one thing right about J.D.’s ideas, it’s that “society degrades us.” Hell, I spent half a paragraph degrading Gen Z/Alpha. Much of this boils down to kids not being allowed to be kids anymore. But that’s a conversation for another day. All I can think to say at this point is, “Teenage suicide…don’t do it!”