"Miike's static long shots and symbolic use of color subversively recall Ozu, and the audition itself becomes, intentional or not, a studied take on stately naïvete. Audition's stylistic trapdoor, though, isn't as abrupt as many seem to suggest, because a shaking body bag and a troubled Asami (sitting by her phone waiting for Aoyama's delayed call) terrifyingly portend the chaos yet to come. Miike's torture mechanism is very much based on the premise that performance is crucial to the freeing of the soul, and just as Asami's rage is as much a product of Freudian psychosexual repression, so too does it express a need to negate her passivity." - Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine