Takashi Miike's Audition is a horror film of rarified atmosphere and terrifying radiance that owes as much to Alfred Hitchcock as David Cronenberg, writes David Parkinson.
Redefining the movie monster, this darkly comic tale turns the beauty and the beast myth on its head by inserting the mind of a murderous maniac into the body of a bashful gamine.
Miike may have overdone the sado-erotic content of the hallucinatory flashbacks but they provide a credible psychological impetus for the chilling climax, whose clinical savagery will haunt you for days.
Also showing at the Ultimate Picture Palace this week is Dungeons and Dragons, a simply dreadful Tinseltown take on the sword-and-sorcery board game. When the teenage Empress Savina (Thora Birch) finds herself under threat from wicked wizard Profion (Jeremy Irons), she has to rely on a gang of rogues to find the jewel that empowers her sceptre.
Already hampered by the low-brow pomposity that pervades the majority of fantasy films, this sorry mess suffers fatally from sloppy plotting, risible dialogue and embarrassing performances.
The unknowns are particularly inept, but Marlon Wayans should be singled out for especial ire for a turn that harks back to the bad old days of Stepin Fetchit.
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