Blogging is a personal and indulgent endeavour. I don’t particularly care who reads this and I’m under no obligation to satisfy a paying or devoted audience. Instead, if I want to write about sitting on the toilet at 3am, it’s entirely my prerogative to do so.

I will however bundle my bogging adventures with a movie to make this journey easier to digest. I am disgusting but I’m not a monster. 

PICTURE THE SCENE. A man, aged 29, at the midnight hour decides he’s in the mood for a film of unsavoury nature. He remembers watching Mark Kermode’s list of 10 films which scared him that wasn’t the Exorcist, and recalled Audition. 

This man had read the book Audition by Ryu Murakami and enjoyed it, having compartmentalised that at some point in his life he’ll get round to watching the movie adaptation. That time was now. 

In his boxers and under the duvet he’d spilt pen ink over earlier, the man settled down and subscribed to BFI Player on Amazon Prime for a 30-day trial. He immediately revoked the subscription, realising he could get through the highlights over a steady weekend. 

Equipped with a glass of disappointingly watered-down Vimto, he started the film. The first hour is geared like an off-beat comedy, with only occasional whiffs of the uncomfortable on the horizon. He was intrigued, with his interest in the movie visible as he slumped down at an increasingly uncomfortable angle. 

Fast forward half hour and things were beginning to escalate. The suspicions were more obvious. The reaches for Vimto became more profuse. He was on edge, barreling towards an unknown he had failed to recollect in the book. He knew it was disturbing, but why?

This man was well seasoned in horror movies. He was confident, possibly arrogant, that he could never be shocked by any movie again. He’d played interactive horror games like Alien: Isolation and Resident Evil 2 remake. The Audition while slumped in bed, he thought, would be a piece of piss. 

Then *that* scene happened. It was a torturous cacophony of his worst nightmares; being paralysed and at the mercy of someone’s batshit will.

Breathing became difficult, his stomach felt off. He tried to drink Vimto but his clumped frame meant liquids had not sunk properly. He sat up to clear his gullet, yet couldn’t look at the screen. He sat on the edge of his bed contemplating what was happening. He pushed ‘X’ on the PS4 controller to pause, yearning for the safety of a toilet bowl enveloping his head.

Escaping to the bog, he necked a glass of water and everything felt clearer. He couldn’t tell whether it was the act of standing up or removing himself from the film’s events, but he felt better. He sat there a while, trying to remember whether he’d had such a physical reaction to a film before. 

He hadn’t. He’d jumped, maybe even been suspicious of silhouettes in the dark, but never felt his stomach turn asunder. This was new. 

He returned to the bedroom slightly refreshed. He realised there was only 14 minutes left, but he was battling his tired state. Surely he could make it to the end, but what if the stomach churn came back? What if it only gets worse in this final act of madness?

As the horror unfurled, he chose to look away – letting the gruesome sound effects paint even worse images in his brain. He was, frankly, an idiot. A man willing to gamble vomiting on his bed to complete a movie. 

As the credits rolled in quite abrupt yet not unsatisfying fashion, he was able to lie back and assess the situation. This was a movie. A sequence of pictures and sounds which physically repulsed him to the bog. This was too much power for art. It must be contained. 

After turning off his TV and curling under his bedsheets, the man felt oddly content with life under lockdown. Flashes of the movie would blip across his mind but at that moment, he realised, quite happily, that he was single. No potential lover could fill his heart and sever his feet. He was okay. Maybe life is better indoors, he thought, as the event washed into dream.