1990s cult classic Japanese horror movie Audition is getting a remake from the writer and director of the 2022 Danish horror film recently remade as Blumhouse’s Speak No Evil. The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse and One Missed Call were just a few of the 2000s movies that drew upon the J-Horror wave for inspiration. But the mania for such remakes eventually died down, leaving just a handful of notable ‘90s Japanese horror films that had yet to be reinterpreted for Western audiences.

Takashi Miike’s truly disturbing horror thriller Audition was among the J-Horror movies Hollywood shied away from remaking, but that’s all changed as Speak No Evil director Christian Tafdrup will reportedly take his own crack at the material, with collaborator Mads Tafdrup co-writing the script (via ᴅᴇᴀᴅline). The Tafdrups’ Audition is billed as a new adaptation of the Ryū Murakami novel that served as the basis for Miike’s 1999 version.

What An Audition Remake Means For Horror

The Original Film Helped Fuel The 2000s Torture Porn Craze

Supernatural goings-on provided the thrills and chills for the majority of big J-Horror тιтles and their Hollywood remakes. Audition is different, however, as its horrors are strictly of the corporeal variety. Indeed, it’s fair to ask whether the film should be considered J-Horror at all, as its vengeance-fueled narrative has little in common with its ghost-obsessed brethren.

The director of several influential ‘90s horror тιтles, Audition’s Miike adapted Murakami’s novel as a truly brutal and cold-blooded thriller, built around a chillingly sadistic protagonist. Miike’s film may have had little apparent influence on the 2000s supernatural-horror wave that brought forth тιтles like The Ring, The Grudge and Pulse. It did, however, serve as a clear influence on torture porn, that other big 2000s horror genre, which exploded thanks to films like Saw and Hostel.

Tafdrup’s 2022 Speak No Evil may not be torture porn strictly-speaking, but it’s at least torture porn-adjacent, and by taking on Audition, the Danish film’s director is seemingly eager to go even further into the darkness and nihilism that typified the 2000s extreme-horror/torture porn cycle. Whether this signals a resurgence for the bleak and violent, and arguably empty, Saw-style fright flick remains to be seen.

Our Take On Audition Being Remade

Miike’s Original Will Be Tough To Beat

Audition being remade doesn’t necessarily mean that Hollywood is re-investing in the torture porn sub-genre. Miike’s take on the original novel may have been bone-chillingly disturbing and very graphic, but Tafdrup doesn’t have to go as far as Miike did in order to deliver a rewarding horror experience. A somewhat toned-down version of Audition may bring scoffs from J-Horror fanatics, but might be just right for the current Hollywood horror scene.

The challenge in remaking Audition is not about gore-level anyway, but is rather about tone. Miike’s original has a low-key, clinical quality that makes it all the more disturbing. Speak No Evil showed that Tafdrup has a strong feel for psychological horror built around human cruelty, making him an intriguing choice to tackle the bloody atrocities of Audition.

Source: ᴅᴇᴀᴅline