YMMV / Audition

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• Adaptation Displacement: Based on a novel by Ryū Murakami, though the book wasn't translated into English until 2009, ten years after the film was released, so it's understandable that the film is more well-known in English-speaking regions.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Does Asami's freakout make her more Yandere or Cute and Psycho? Or is she only "loving" Aoyama the way she was taught as a child?
  • Did Aoyama attempt to take advantage of a naive young woman, or was he just going along with the audition process because Yoshikawa pressured him?
  • Is the ending we see played straight with Aoyama's torture and Asami's psycho tendencies real? Or is it just a nightmare that Aoyama was having while he was with Asami after they consummate their relationship, where he wakes up briefly from the nightmare and then falls back into it?
• It Was His Sled: It's common knowledge that the movie isn't a romantic drama in the slightest.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Asami wants her boyfriend to love only her. Too bad he has an adult son and a dog. Well, easily fixed...
  • Additionally, her stepfather crosses the moral event horizon the moment he pops up!
• Nausea Fuel: The only time it is okay to feed someone your own vomit is if you are a bird feeding your babies. Made about a million times worse when you realize that, according to the director, this was not a special effect. It was actually Eihi Shiina's own vomit, at her insistence.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: People coming into this film expecting the wall-to-wall gorefest typical of a Miike film will be initially surprised and disappointed that it starts off as a romantic comedy. Stick around, boys and girls... Uncle Takashi isn't done with you yet. If anything, that's what makes the second half so horrifying; if you didn't know it was a horror film, you'd never know what was coming because the first half is played so straight.
• Tear Jerker: The opening sequence. Young Shigehiko is bringing a diorama he made for his sick mother to the hospital, in order to cheer her up. He arrives a mere few minutes after his mother has died.
• Unintentional Period Piece: One imagines the plot of the movie would’ve been much different or avoided entirely with the invention of apps like Tinder in The New '10s. Then again, some serial killers and other criminals use apps to prey on victims...

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