Critical response
Audition had its share of audience walk-outs. When shown at the 2000
Rotterdam Film Festival, one enraged female viewer confronted Miike by shouting at him: "You're evil!"
[2] During uncensored members-only shows at the
Irish Film Institute in
Dublin in 2001, some patrons collapsed in apparent
shock. One audience member was rushed to the
St. James's Hospital but later discharged himself.
[3]
For its unflinching graphic content, the film has been likened to the
film adaptation of
Stephen King's Misery and
Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses. Among filmmakers featured on
Bravo's
100 Scariest Movie Moments (on which the film appeared at #11), notable horror directors including
John Landis and
Rob Zombie found the film very difficult to watch,
[4] given its grisly content; Landis claiming that its extremities even deterred him from enjoying the film overall.
Bloody Disgusting ranked the film fourteenth in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "Considered by many to be Takashi Miike’s masterpiece, this cringe-inducing, seriously disturbed film boasts one of the most unbearable scenes of torture in movie history... It’s revolting in the best possible way; the prolific Miike goes for the jugular here, and he cuts deep."
[5]
Feminist critics responded to the way women were portrayed as epitomizing different
stereotypes, and to Aoyama and Yoshikawa's definition of the ideal woman. However,
Audition can also be seen as a subversive commentary on these themes. Although initially presented as a passive model of Japanese femininity, Asami is revealed to be far more dangerous than she appears and ultimately holds power, wreaking terrible vengeance on those who
objectify or seek to exploit her. Contradicting both readings, Miike himself has denied that the film is meant as social criticism at all (as he says of all his films).
[6]