Split Picks: Takashi Miike's 'Audition' Vs. 'Lesson of the Evil'

To close out the series on Japanese Horror, Spit Picks looks at a director known for testing the limits of violence on film.Takashi Miike is best known for three things: He is prolific, versatile, and is no stranger to using extreme gore. With 115 directorial credits listed on his IMDb page (at time of publishing), he has made films in just about every genre imaginable. But from blood-soaked epics like Ichi The Killer and 13 Assassins to a glut of Yakuza films, and even a death-centric musical comedy in The Happiness of the Katakuris, Miike's films are never shy to show off fountains of gore with no sense of shyness. But through them all, Miike always injects his unique style, no matter the genre.
With Bennett Glace and Jim Hickcox, Split Picks finishes its special series on Japanese Horror by comparing Miike's masterwork to one of his most extreme depictions of violence — an almost hour-long school shooting. With Audition, Miike follows a widowed man, Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi), after his friend suggests they set up a film audition to help him find a new wife. When he meets Asami (Eihi Shiina), they quickly fall in love, but everyone around Shigeharu tells him to notice the red flags, which he gleefully overlooks, until he finds himself in a scenario that ranks among the most infamous torture scenes on film. It's a testament to Audition that, in an era when most successful Asian films were remade by Americans, still no one has remade this tale of revenge.
Lesson of the Evil finds a popular and handsome teacher on a path to violence against his own students. With a code of morals that makes sense to only him, he tries to stop his students from cheating on tests and uncovers various scandals in the school. As his background comes into focus, he doubles down on what he learned during his time in the United States and. with the assistance of a talking shotgun, he decides to solve his problems in the worst way possible.
The pairing of films provides some fascinating contrasts in tone, and some striking similarities in their overall structure. In this episode, the gang discusses how Audition bends time, if Lesson of the Evil crosses the limits of acceptable violence on film, and how As The Gods Will might be the spiritual sequel to Lesson of the Evil that makes black humor work in a similarly morbid scenario.