Takashi Miike’s Audition is hailed as one of the most disturbing films ever made, a horror masterpiece that lulls you with romance before sawing off your foot. But let’s be real: most of the runtime feels like a made-for-TV drama about a widower learning to love again, until suddenly it remembers it’s supposed to be horror and throws a sack full of mutilated men at you. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a Hallmark movie that falls face-first into a snuff film.
The Setup: The Bachelor, Tokyo Edition
Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) is a middle-aged widower whose son decides Dad needs to get laid again. Instead of hitting Tinder like a normal person (granted, it’s 1999), Shigeharu’s producer buddy cooks up a plan: they’ll hold a fake audition for a TV show so he can meet his dream girl. Because nothing says true love like tricking 30 women into thinking they’re auditioning for work when really you just want a date. Red flag number one.
Enter Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), a soft-spoken ex-ballerina with burn scars, a resume full of dead references, and the kind of red flags that could signal a fleet of warships. Naturally, Shigeharu ignores his friend’s warnings and falls for her, because nothing gets the blood pumping like obvious danger.
Romance, With a Side of Stagnation
The first hour of Audition is glacial. Shigeharu courts Asami, takes her out to dinner, listens to her tragic backstory, and gazes wistfully like he’s auditioning for The Bachelor: Midlife Crisis Edition. For a film billed as “one of the scariest ever made,” it’s mostly middle-aged dating advice: don’t ignore red flags, don’t lie about auditions, and don’t propose after three dates to a woman who stares at her phone for four days straight.
The problem is that Miike lingers. And lingers. And lingers. Watching Shigeharu date is less like suspense and more like watching your uncle struggle through Match.com.
The Sack: Finally, Something Happens
Then we get to the sack. Ah yes, the infamous moment where Asami sits perfectly still in her barren apartment, waiting for Shigeharu to call. The phone rings, she smiles, and the camera pans to a giant burlap sack in the corner that suddenly lurches. For audiences in 1999, this was terrifying. For modern audiences, it’s more like: “Oh cool, she keeps roommates in IKEA storage now.”
Later, we learn the sack contains a man missing feet, fingers, tongue, and dignity. He crawls out, begging for food, only to be fed vomit in a dog bowl. It’s shocking, yes. But also unintentionally hilarious if you’re not in the right mindset. The poor guy looks like a deleted scene from Jackass: Extreme Edition.
Shigeharu’s Bad Trip: Acupuncture, Now With Torture
When Shigeharu finally gets drugged by Asami, the movie shifts from rom-com to Saw: Prequel. Asami explains he’s failed the ultimate test: loving only her. Then she breaks out her torture kit, which seems to be part acupuncture set, part Home Depot clearance bin.
She sticks needles under his eyes and abdomen while whispering “kiri kiri kiri” like she’s narrating an ASMR horror video. Then she saws off his foot with piano wire in a scene that made audiences faint but now plays like a YouTube DIY project gone wrong.
It’s brutal, yes, but it also highlights how wildly unbalanced the film is. We go from sipping wine in hotel rooms to amateur podiatry murder in about five minutes. It’s less “slow-burn horror” and more “the director remembered at the last minute this was supposed to traumatize people.”
Asami: Femme Fatale or Walking Red Flag?
Eihi Shiina deserves credit—she looks haunting, moves like a ghost, and delivers the creepy-calm villainess thing perfectly. But the character? She’s less terrifying mastermind and more “what if Fatal Attraction had a cosplay budget?”
Her backstory is a grab bag of abuse clichés: burned as a child, tormented at ballet, abused by bosses. The film wants us to see her as both victim and villain, but mostly she’s just a mess of clichés sewn together with piano wire.
By the end, she’s so unhinged that subtlety is dead and buried. Which, come to think of it, might be the film’s motto.
The Son Saves the Day (Because Dad’s Useless)
Just when it looks like Shigeharu is done for, his teenage son comes home. Asami lunges, the son kicks her down the stairs, and her neck snaps like a breadstick. That’s it. That’s the big climax. The entire horror of the film gets undone by a teenager coming home early from school. It’s less operatic finale, more sitcom timing.
The movie ends with Shigeharu watching Asami die, remembering her words about seeing him again. Which is poetic, sure—but also a reminder that his dating life is cursed and maybe he should’ve just bought a dog.
Why Critics Love It (and Why They Shouldn’t)
Critics rave about Audition’s “slow-burn dread,” “radical tonal shift,” and “commentary on misogyny.” Translation: they fell asleep during the first hour and woke up just in time for the foot-sawing. Yes, the contrast between calm romance and extreme violence is bold. But bold doesn’t equal good. Sometimes it just equals whiplash.
For all its reputation, the film is wildly uneven: one-half soap opera, one-half torture porn. Instead of blending genres, it crashes them into each other like a car wreck. You don’t walk away scared—you walk away confused about whether you just watched a dating PSA or an audition tape for Hostel.
Dark Humor Highlights
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Shigeharu’s genius plan to find love is catfishing 30 women at once. Truly, a king of romance.
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Asami’s sack is less terrifying now and more “ah, so she’s just Marie Kondo-ing her leftovers.”
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The mutilated man eating vomit from a dog bowl could double as an anti-drug PSA.
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Asami’s acupuncture technique would make actual practitioners scream—not from fear, but from bad form.
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The final showdown ends not with catharsis, but with gravity. Stairs: the true hero of Japanese horror.
Final Verdict: From Boring Dates to Foot Fetish Nightmares
Audition is influential, yes. Disturbing, sure. But it’s also padded, uneven, and accidentally funny. The first half is a snooze, the second half is a freak show, and together they feel less like a masterpiece and more like two films that got Frankensteined in a Tokyo editing bay.
Takashi Miike has made plenty of wild, brilliant, and terrifying films. Audition is not one of them. It’s a curiosity, a cult favorite, and a torture sequence stapled to a melodrama. If you want romance, watch Before Sunrise. If you want gore, watch Martyrs. If you want both at once… maybe just don’t.
