The cast and crew consisted primarily of previous Miike collaborators, with the exception of Shiina, who had worked as a model prior to her acting career.

Posing as a casting director, Shigeharu is immediately enchanted by an applicant named Asami Yamazaki, who says she was pursuing a career as a ballet dancer until injuries ended her aspirations.

Yasuhisa is suspicious when he cannot reach any of the references in Asami's résumé, such as a music producer she said she worked for, who turns out to have gone missing eighteen months earlier.

She lives in a tiny apartment, containing little more than a large sack and a telephone; she sits perfectly still next to the phone for four days after the audition, waiting for it to ring.

He crawls out and begs for food, prompting Asami to vomit into a dog bowl, which he hungrily consumes as Shigeharu watches in horror.

When Shigeharu wakes up, Asami informs him he's been injected with a paralytic agent that disables his muscles but leaves him conscious and able to feel, and begins to torture him with acupuncture needles.

Shigeharu tells Shigehiko to call the police and stares across the room at the dying Asami, who repeats what she said on one of their dates about her excitement over seeing him again.

[6] Miike has stated that when he met journalists in the United Kingdom and France, he found they commented on the film's feminist themes when Asami gets revenge on the men in her life.

[7] The film sets up Aoyama with traits and behaviors which could be considered sexist: a list of criteria for his bride to meet, and the phony audition format he uses to search for a future wife.

[8] Tom Mes, author of Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike, stated that the torture sequence, with the mutilation of Aoyama, can be seen as revenge from Asami.

[9] Chris Pizzello, writing in the American Cinematographer, stated that one plausible approach to interpreting the film is to see the final act as a representation of Aoyama's guilt at his mistreatment of women and his desire to dominate them.

[11] Elvis Mitchell (The New York Times) stated that the theme of the film was: "the objectification of women in Japanese society and the mirror-image horror of retribution it could create".

[15] Tom Mes suggested that these themes can be witnessed in the scene where Asami feeds her mutilated prisoner and then turns into the childhood version of herself and pets him like a dog.

[17] Omega were originally behind the production of Hideo Nakata's film Ring; this was a great success in Japan and, subsequently, the rest of Asia.

[20] Prior to Audition, Tengan was best known as a screenwriter for working with his father (Shohei Imamura) on The Eel, which won the Palme d'Or in 1997.

[44] Audition was screened at the 29th Rotterdam International Film Festival in The Netherlands in early 2000 where it was shown as part of a Miike retrospective.

[3][6] Tom Mes stated that Audition received the most attention at Rotterdam, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize for the best film of competition.

[2] When asked about the reception in Japan, Miike stated that there was "no reaction" as the film was shown in small theaters for a short theatrical run.

[51][52] This release included an interview with Ryu Murakami, a selected scene commentary by Miike, and a clip from Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

[51][52] Peter Schorn of IGN gave a negative review of the 2006 DVD, finding that the video was "overcompressed to the point that a distracting, shifting blockiness frequently in backgrounds that draws the eye away from the actors".

[53] IGN concluded that the: "overall image quality is soft and fuzzy, with weak black levels, murky shadow areas and less-than-impressive color saturation".

[51] Matthew Leyland (Sight & Sound) reviewed this release, stating that the audio and visual presentation was "exemplary" while noting that the interview with Miike was the only noteworthy bonus feature on the disc.

The website's critical consensus reads, "An audacious, unsettling Japanese horror film from director Takashi Miike, Audition entertains as both a grisly shocker and a psychological drama".

Scheck (The Hollywood Reporter) wrote that "Miike lulls the audience into a state of complacency with a studied, slow-moving, lightly comic first half before delivering a gruesome final section that makes Stephen King's Misery look wholesome"; the ending was "all the more shocking for the clinical way in which it is presented".

[65] In comparison, he stated that Audition is "authentically disturbing, and infinitely more horrifying: the first time I watched it – on DVD, at home, after warnings I had received – I was repeatedly tempted, through the last half hour, to turn it off".

[65] Of the film's success with Western audiences, Miike states that he was not surprised, but that he had "no idea what goes on in the minds of people in the West and I don't pretend to know what their tastes are.

After the release of Audition, Miike was going to adapt Murakami's novel Coin Locker Babies, but the project failed to find enough financing.

[70][71][72] The term was invented by David Edelstein to describe films such as Saw, The Devil's Rejects and Wolf Creek offering "titillating and shocking" scenes which push the audience to the margins of depravity in order for them to "feel something".

Miike's films live inside their characters, taking the temperature of their longings, the ridiculous ambitions they chase so obsessively and their need to experience the extreme to prove they're alive".

This film leads you in one direction, skillfully hinting at a darker storyline for the otherwise meek and slight Asami until the final 15 minutes where we are introduced to a merciless monster.