LESSON OF THE EVIL (2012)

Genre: Thriller
Director: Takashi Miike
Cast: Hideaki Ito, Fumi Nikaido, Shota Sometani, Takayuki Yamada
RunTime: 2 hrs 9 mins
Rating: R21 (Violence & Gore)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 11 July 2013

Synopsis: Seiji Hasumi is an instructor at Shinko Academy, a private high school. He is a model teacher, extremely popular with the students and well respected by the faculty and the PTA. However, one of the students, Reika Katagiri, feels something menacing lurking beneath his shining reputation. Hasumi brilliantly solves one problem after another, from a teacher-student sexual harassment to group cheating to bullying, and starts to take control of the school. Specifically, the boss of the bullies gets expelled because of his violent behavior. A “monster parent” dies at home in a fire started by an arsonist. The problems go away, but Reika is uneasy about the way they are solved. Masanobu Tsurii (55), an unpopular teacher in the school, despises the popular Hasumi. He starts investigating Hasumi’s past and discovers that many people he was involved with have already died. Hasumi, who had hidden listening devices around the school, finds out how Tsurii is looking into his past, so he kills him one day on the train and makes it look like suicide. Hasumi also murders a male student, who was trying to get back at Hasumi for catching him cheat on a test. In his true nature, Hasumi is a psychopath, a man who cannot feel empathy toward other people. Since he was a child, he has killed people who got in his way. He even killed his own parents when they realized what he was doing. Soon, Hasumi becomes physically involved with Miya Yasuhara, a female student who he helped in a sexual harassment incident, and Miya starts to sense his evildoings. Hasumi finds out about Miya’s suspicion and decides that she must be eliminated… 

Movie Review:

In order to prepare yourself for ‘Lesson of the Evil’, you’ll do well to acquaint yourself with its screenwriter cum director Takeshi Miike. Better known as the enfant terrible of Japanese cinema, the 52-year-old highly prolific filmmaker has been defined by controversy with his penchant for extreme violence, epitomised in cultish hits such as ‘Ichi the Killer’ and ‘Audition’. Though his recent works - ‘Sukiyaki Western Django’, ‘Crows Zero’ and ’13 Assassins’ - might suggest that he has toned down his excessively violent sensibilities, ‘Lesson of the Evil’ (adapted from Yusuke Kishi’s best-selling horror thriller) finds the bad boy reverting to his old ways.

To call the movie an exercise in gratuitous violence doesn’t quite cut it, especially since its final 40 mins has graphic scene after graphic scene of high-school children getting their body parts blown apart by a powerful shotgun. At first, one’s reaction of seeing such gore is shocking to say the least; but Miike’s repetition just about reassures that you are inadvertently numbed by the mindless slaughter. Yet anyone with a shred of conscience left in their hearts should also feel increasingly frustrated at Miike’s bloodbath, especially since he finds no convincing reason why such senseless carnage should be exacted on these teenagers, nor any rationale why its protagonist Mr Hasumi (Hideaki Ito) would be driven to orchestrate such mayhem.

Indeed, that indignation is exacerbated when one considers how it had seemed that Miike was sincere in building up some form of social commentary about the state of high-school affairs in Japan. Like the far superior ‘Battle Royale’ and ‘Confessions’, Miike starts out by portraying certain deep-rooted problems in modern-day Japanese school environments, among them cheating, bullying and even sexual abuse. Amidst such a backdrop, Miike paints Hasumi as the unorthodox saviour - not only does he suggest that jamming be used to put a stop to cheating during exams, he voluntarily approaches a particular student, Miya (Erina Mizuno), whom he sees is being sexually harassed by her gym teacher Shibahara (Takayuki Yamada) to offer a way out.

To be fair, we are warned quite early that Hasumi isn’t quite so simple. A fellow Physics teacher Tsurii (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) unearths evidence that there was a wave of suicides which occurred at the former school which Hasumi taught at while he was there. Shibahara mysteriously disappears one day. Ditto for the gay art teacher Kume (Takehiro Hira), whom Hasumi blackmails by threatening to reveal his inappropriate affair with another student Masahiko (Kento Hayashi). And then of course, our worst suspicions are confirmed when Hasumi plots Tsurii’s apparent suicide on board a late empty subway train, and threatens another student whom Tsurii had shared information with using a hot iron.

Yet twisted as it sounds, Miike exercises a surprising amount of restraint during these earlier scenes. In spite of the occasional gory scene, Miike treats the proceedings with dignity and gravity, setting his audience’s expectations for a smart yet bizarre psychological thriller. In particular, Hasumi’s psychosis is also referenced with Norse mythology, which is an intriguing metaphor that we quickly learn goes nowhere. Yes, Miike squanders all the self-respect he has built up over the course of the movie by throwing all manner of reason and legitimacy (along with some of the students) out of the window once the carnage unfolds over the course of one single evening.

Using the preparation for some school festival as an excuse for the after-hours backdrop, Miike conveniently ensures that Hasumi can go about his massacre unfettered by any other adult or, for that matter, authority. The only teacher present, he also uses that aforementioned jamming technology to prevent any of the students from contacting for outside help. But really, that’s no more than an expedient means for Miike to stage the bloody spectacle - which he does so quite gleefully, we might add - without so much as bothering about anyone ruining the party.

At that point is also where the tone of the movie starts to go all over the place. We’re not just talking about the callous humour with which Miike treats some of the deaths; rather, he turns Hasumi into a caricature with every subsequent attempt to lay out a backstory of his previous sociopathy - a flashback to Hasumi in his young adult years teaming up with yet another psychopath, Clay (Jab), is laughably over-the-top. One truly senses Miike’s desperation or misguidedness when even pseudo-supernatural elements start coming into the picture, alternating traumatising and energising Hasumi’s depravity - and to those who think that may be fodder for some interesting psycho-analysis, we might as well tell you not to bother because it is utter hokum.

That’s truly a pity, because Ito is truly magnetic in the role. There is never any doubt from the start why his students would be so enamoured with him, and Ito effortlessly turns that charm into menace when he needs to satisfy his urges for killing. Even when the picture descends into mindless farce, Ito is the only reason we continue watching, maintaining both grace and composure throughout. It is a bold casting against type from straightforward heroes one might recognise from his previous movies like ‘Princess Blade’ and ‘Sukiyaki Western Django’, but ultimately a wasted opportunity considering how much more that the movie could have been.

Even with Miike’s excessive tendencies in mind, there is just something fundamentally wrong about revelling in the senseless deaths of high-school children. Therein lies our deep objection with Miike’s ‘Lesson of the Evil’, which in our opinion feels not only morally wrong, but reprehensibly so. How watching a psychotic teacher brutally murder hordes of teenage school-children can be considered entertainment is inexplicable, so we seriously urge you to examine your own sensibilities before you step into this lesson. 

Movie Rating:

(Unless watching a whole school of teenagers getting blown apart by a psychotic teacher with a shotgun is your idea of entertainment, avoid Takashi Miike’s ‘Lesson of the Evil’ with malevolence)

Review by Gabriel Chong