Lesson of the Evil

I had the enormous fortune, one that likely very few people will have, that I didn’t know anything at all about Lesson of the Evil before watching it. Takashi Miike is not a director that I follow and whose films I look forward to, I never liked his style too much, but this one is a surprisingly civil film (it doesn’t mix any humour, there are no WTF scenes, the violence is very concentrated but not overdone as a splatter). It surprised and pleased me, especially with its closing forty five minutes. That it would wade into such pure horror (slasher) waters was something I wasn’t expecting. (08/11/2013)

The fatal drawback of Takashi Miike’s new film consists in the fact that it works best if the viewer doesn’t know anything at all about it in advance. Any review, synopsis, trailer or rumour around the film immediately reveals not only a twist, but the entire concept of the film. This is due to the fact that most people in Japan know the plot, because it is taken from a tremendously popular novel. ---- SPOILER ALERT ---- The foundation of Lesson of the Evil  is a game with viewers’ emotions and expectations. The protagonist is a charming and popular high-school teacher who also happens to be a homicidal maniac who murders an entire class of his students in the climax. The film gives only minimal insight into the character. Despite a handful of sequences when the viewer has a chance to see the situation from the protagonist’s perspective (a talking murder weapon), the main character mostly remains an impenetrable evil entity full of contradictions. Nor does the film benefit from the fact that it had to dispense with a lot of material from the voluminous source work, for which all of the other characters pay the price. Though Miike tries to develop some of the student characters, they end up being nothing more than formulaic figures due to the lack of space given to them. (03/29/2013)

One star is for the music and the other is for the jokes. Otherwise, it was a film that was way too long, considering we didn't learn anything anyway. I didn't get me until halfway through. If it wasn't for the music, I would have felt like I lost the time for nothing at all. The psycho is so uninteresting, or maybe I've become too sensitive, or vice versa. :-O For me it was boring. (07/22/2013)

Miike is now gradually already moving beyond the borders of the entertaining, and his formal flourishes suffer incredibly from a story and characters that are more or less defined only by a final performance from a shotgun. But during this, everyone behaves so unbelievably, really unbelievably stupid that it’s not even saved by the scene where the teacher recognizes a student by smelling her panties (good boy, raping his charges, and doing it to them with his mouth), while his skull is subsequently shot so thoroughly that pieces of his brain smash the camera lens. (11/05/2013)

Takashi Miike once again demonstrates his prowess as a director and his ability to adapt. While this is indeed a gritty film, the shooting at the end is almost too realistic, but mainly, it's a movie about how a lunatic can hide anywhere. So, dear children, especially in school, try not to cheat too much, because otherwise, you'll have some serious problems. (05/27/2015)