Audition - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Audition




Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Have you ever come out of viewing a film thinking to yourself, “wow, I did NOT have enough crack for this viewing”? Yeah, this was that type of film. Now don’t get me wrong. I knew this film was going to be a trip, being that it was one of Takashi Miike’s 90s films, and due to the fact that I’ve seen a few reviews of the film over the last 27 years. And frankly, I felt weird that I had missed it for so many years. I’ve seen just about every one of Takashi Miike’s films over the years, even his really REALLY weird ones. But for some reason, I just never got around to watching Audition. Even when the Arrow and Shout! Studios Blu-rays were released a few years back, and I declined a review copy for some unknown reason (I have no idea why I didn’t to this day, I’m as I’m a huge Takashi Miike fan. I’m guessing because the Shout! release was given very poor marks for the video encode, but my memory is a bit blank on the subject, and when Arrow’s 4K UHD set was announced, I figured it was time to remedy that little faux pas.

Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryu Ishibashi) is an aging widower, living alone with his teenage son Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki), and trying to get back in the saddle. At the urging of his son, Shigeharu decides to start looking for a bride once more. But instead of dating like a normal person, Shigeharu and his co-worker Yasuhisa (Jun Kunimura) cook up a plan to start auditioning for a movie. But instead of actually hiring anyone, they will use the audition process to analyze and weed out any potential mates that aren’t suitable, leaving only the cream of the crop behind. Easy, peasy, and none of the pitfalls or issues with dating. Just analyze the best of the best and leave the rest (so to speak).

Shigeharu is instantly smitten with the audition of a young woman by the name of Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) and hones in on her the second the audition starts. Asami is mysterious, beautiful, and full of joy and a lovely outlook on life, even though she has suffered an incredible amount. However, unbeknownst to the smitten lover, Asami’s life experiences have left her with more than an apparently good outlook on life. The abuse she suffered at the hands of multiple people has left her scarred and torn apart mentally, making her the biggest monster out of everyone who abused her. After making a promise to love her and only her, Shigeharu begins to realize that Asami isn’t the perfect creation he initially thought she was.

Audition is not just a singular movie, but really 3 movies in 1. The first act is a love story, told in a way that is strangely beautiful and sweet for a horror movie, let alone Takashi Miike. Here we see everything as told from the point of view of our widower, watching him hatch a hair-brained plan to woo a young woman, and then fall madly in love with her. However, the film changes DRAMATICALLY the second that you see Asami waiting by the phone, with a gigantic burlap sack with something alive inside. From that point on, Takashi changes the tone to that of a sinister psychological and physical horror film. After Asami disappears in the middle of the night, we’re dunked into a surreal dreamlike sequence, with Shigeharu hunting down all of the places that she brought up in their conversations, only to find a trail of death and mutilation in her wake. But it’s the final act that brings things together in a very dense but weirdly satisfying conclusion when Asami returns to torture her lover.

And while this may seem very disjointed on the first viewing, subsequent viewings start to peel back the layers of the onion and prove that there is method to Takashi Miike’s insane madness here. The extras are extremely revealing and offer some great insight into where Miike’s headspace was and why he chose to do what he did, narrative-wise. This is really a biting satire on love and loneliness, showing just how much that pain and the fine line between love and hate affect us. There are heavy implications of just how much Asami’s point of view and concepts of love and pain are so heavily intertwined, as the very people who claimed to love her over the course of her life have shown her that by inflicting pain (at least in her mind). And Shigeharu is jolted out of his bougie executive lifestyle, as this whirlwind romance leaves him as physically and emotionally scarred as Asami is by the very end. It’s a fascinating and surreal watch, and one that requires multiple viewings to really get the most out of it. The cast is expertly cast, with Ryu and Eihi taking front and center stage for 90% of the film. They play off of each other exquisitely, balancing sweet and endearing with psychotic and manipulative with deft ease. Neither person is trying to hurt the other in their own minds, but their life experiences and trauma have created such warped realities for both of them that reality itself is almost a dream.




Rating:

Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, and language.




4K Video: Video:

The one weak spot (according to sources) of previous releases was the fact that Audition was using an aging master that was pretty poor with the Shout! Studios release, and just “pretty good” for the Arrow release a few years back. According to the packaging, Audition was restored by Arrow Films in its original aspect ratio and transferred to 4K via a 4K scan of the 16mm camera negative. This process was done at Imagica, Japan, and then color graded by Dragon Post Production in Wales. End result? A film that looks amazing considering it came from a Super 16mm film stock, and looks better than many masters from a 35mm source!

The release looks stunning with thick and heavy grain that doesn’t clump or obscure the view, and colors that pop when necessary. The film is given a very heavy Sepia grading, with deep blue and green tones throughout. Fine details are excellent, with strong facial tones and really nice coloring due to the Dolby Vision. Strangely enough, the HDR/DV doesn’t produce oversaturated primary colors, but rather adds subtle nuances to certain scenes, cleaning up the black levels for what should have been a grainy and blotchy mess (16mm sources are notorious for looking very weak in dark shots). It will never be bright and shiny ala Transformers, but this is an excellent transfer all the way around. ESPECIALLY a 16mm one.






Audio:

Arrow’s 4K UHD disc sports not one, not two, but THREE lossless audio mixes to enjoy. I’m not intimately familiar with the original film design and the subsequent home video remixes, but I do know that the film was originally mastered in 2.0 Stereo theatrically, so I’m going with the 2.0 Mix being the theatrical one here. But beyond that, we get the 5.1 mix from the Blu-ray and a 4.0 mix as well. I A/B/C’d between all three tracks and find each one has its own pros and cons, but I liked the 4.0 one the best. The track is not a bass bomb, so dropping the LFE channel does very little to change the dynamics, and the 2.0 mix feels just a bit boxy. Dialog is strong in all three, and the ambient nature of the film is very subtle, leaving most of the mix in the front of the room more than the surrounds.

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Extras:

• Introduction by director Takashi Miike
• Audio commentary by director Takashi Miike and screenwriter Daisuke Tengan
• Audio commentary by Miike biographer Tom Mes
• Callback, a brand new interview with actor Ryo Ishibashi
• Ties that Bind, an interview with director Takashi Miike
• Damaged Romance, an appreciation by Japanese cinema historian Tony Rayns
• Archive interviews with stars Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Renji Ishibashi, and Ren Osugi
• Deeper Deeper Into Audition, an audio essay by author and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
• Trailers
• Image gallery
• Collectors' booklet featuring new writing on the film by Anton Bitel, Jennie Kermode and Jamie Graham
• Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Dark Inker - Sampson and original UK artwork by Graham Humphreys

Final Score: ​

Audition, much like many of Takashi Miike’s earlier films, is VERY hard to watch. And this is coming from a lifelong horror fan who’s cheerfully watched thousands of people gutted at the hands of slasher serial killers over the years. There’s nothing so wild and crazy as the visceral and over-the-top gore of films like Saw or Hostel, but it is so intense that I was left with this uneasy and sick feeling in the pit of my stomach after the 1st act. I love to hate the film, and almost hate to love it, even though it is EXCELLENT on all technical aspects of the story. It’s one of those films that I realize I’m going to have to put myself in the mood to watch and make sure I’m in a frame of mind to be disturbed by the time I’m done. So while I can’t go out of my way to say “oh yeah, this is an awesome movie, I love it! You should too!”, I still must reiterate that this is a very good film. It’s just a rough one to watch and yet so mesmerizing at the same time. Arrow’s 4K UHD disc package is fantastic, with good extras, great video (finally, neither of the previous two Blu-ray releases was that amazing, judging by reviewers I respect and trust), not to mention a hefty array of extras to boot. I want to say “Oh yeah, go watch this!”, but at the same time, I have to give the warning that this is for seasoned horror fans more than casual ones.




Technical Specifications:

Starring: Ryu Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki, Jun Kunimura
Directed by: Takashi Miike
Written by: Ryu Murakami, Daisuke Tengan
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 HEVC
Audio: Japanese: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Japanese DTS-HD MA 4.0, Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0
Subtitles: English
Studio: Arrow Films
Rated: R
Runtime: 115 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: June 16th, 2026

Recommendation: Twisted Watch for Seasoned Horror Veterans