He is a controversial figure in the contemporary Japanese cinema industry, with several of his films being criticised for their extreme graphic violence.

Some of his best known films are Audition, Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q, Dead or Alive, One Missed Call, and various remakes: 13 Assassins, Hara-kiri, and Graveyard of Honor.

Miike still directs V-Cinema productions intermittently, due to the creative freedom afforded by the less stringent censorship of the medium and the riskier content that the producers will allow.

The film showcased his extreme style and his recurring themes, and its success allowed him to work on higher-budgeted pictures.

Much of his work depicts the activities of criminals (especially yakuza) or concern themselves with gaijin, non-Japanese or foreigners living in Japan.

!, The Great Yokai War), period pieces (Sabu), a road movie (The Bird People in China), a teen drama (Andromedia), a farcical musical comedy horror (The Happiness of the Katakuris), video game adaptations (Like a Dragon, Ace Attorney), manga adaptations (Blade of the Immortal, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable, Terra Formers, The Mole Song Trilogy) and character driven crime dramas (Ley Lines, Agitator).

While Miike often creates films that are less accessible and target arthouse audiences and fans of extreme cinema, such as Izo and the "Box" segment in Three... Extremes, he has created several mainstream and commercial titles such as the horror film One Missed Call and the fantasy drama The Great Yokai War.

The series, featuring episodes by a range of established horror directors such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper and Dario Argento, was supposed to provide directors with relative creative freedom and relaxed restrictions on violent and sexual content (some sexual content was edited from the Argento-directed episode "Jenifer").

Mick Garris, creator and executive producer of the series, described the episode as "amazing, but hard even for me to watch... definitely the most disturbing film I've ever seen".