LESSON OF THE EVIL (2012 - Japanese)

Studio:       Toho
Director:    Takashi Miike
Writer:       Takashi Miike, Yusuke Kishi
Producer:  Koji Azuma, Toru Mori, Misako Saka
Stars:     Hideaki Ito, Fumi Nikaido, Shota Sometani, Kento Hayashi, Kodai Asaka, Erina Mizuno

Review Score:

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Summary:

As a rash of strange suicides sweeps through a Japanese high school, students and faculty discover that a popular teacher may be more than he seems.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

During a faculty meeting at Shinko Academy in Japan, well-liked teacher Seiji Hasumi proposes an anti-cheating measure involving jamming cell phones while students take tests. Upset over perceived bullying of his daughter Rina, Mr. Kiyoto angrily confronts Hasumi and a school administrator.

A group of students witnesses a classmate named Miya going behind closed doors with her teacher Tetsuro Shibahara and they report the incident to Hasumi. Hasumi discovers that Shibahara has been extorting Miya for sex by threatening to report her for shoplifting. Hasumi provides Miya with a plan to blackmail Shibahara in return and later enters into a sexual relationship with Miya himself.

Although the faculty decided against cell phone jamming, signals are mysteriously blocked during the next exam anyway, which frustrates the cheating students. The students believe that Radio Club teacher Masanobu Tsurii is responsible, but Tsurii suspects Hasumi. Tsurii begins researching the Werther Effect of copycat suicides and its connection to Hasumi’s past.

Rina puts water bottles outside her home to ward off stray cats. However, the water is secretly replaced with kerosene and the bottles explode, killing Mr. Kiyoto when a discarded cigarette accidentally ignites them.

Hasumi discovers that teaching colleague Takeki Kume is having a homosexual relationship with one of the students. Hasumi blackmails Kume into allowing him use of Kume’s apartment for having his rendezvous with Miya.

After overhearing Tsurii mentioning to police that Hasumi previously taught at Kitahara Municipal High School, student Keisuke does his own research into the teacher’s past as well as the Werther Effect. Keisuke discovers that a number of students committed suicide while Hasumi was employed at Kitahara High.

Student Tadenuma starts a fight at school when someone makes an Internet post insinuating that he is responsible for the explosion at the Kiyoto house. Miya recalls Hasumi asking her how to access private message boards. Tade later disappears after an encounter with Hasumi.

Keisuke confers with Tsurii regarding what he knows of Hasumi’s past. Tsurii tells Keisuke what he uncovered regarding Hasumi, including the suspicion that Hasumi killed his own parents and made it look like an intruder was responsible by stabbing himself. Meanwhile, Hasumi eavesdrops on the conversation through a listening device planted in the wall outlet of Tsurii’s classroom. Hasumi later kills Tsurii on the subway by making it look like the man hanged himself.

Following Tsurii’s death, Keisuke suspects foul play and uncovers the bug planted in the classroom. However, Hasumi tortures and kills Keisuke before he can alert anyone. Hasumi reflects on his past when he partnered with a fellow sociopath named Clay Chambers at Harvard. After having committed multiple murders together, Hasumi ultimately killed Clay.

When Miya becomes suspicious, Hasumi kills her and throws her off the school’s roof to make it look like she jumped. Another student stumbles upon the scene and Hasumi kills her, too.

As the students decorate the school for a festival, Hasumi arms himself with a shotgun. He then hunts down and kills each of the students, as well as several teachers including Shibahara. His end game is to frame Kume for the murders.

After the massacre, Hasumi assumes that he killed everyone. He makes it appear as if Kume imprisoned him and waits for the police to arrive. When they do, he discovers that two students survived. They wildly claim that Hasumi was responsible and prove it by finding a recording that was unknowingly made with a CPR training kit. The police arrest Hasumi, who gives a cryptic explanation for his crimes to the two students before being taken away. Meanwhile, a student seemingly dead on the grounds outside the school suddenly draws breath again.

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Review:

Recognizing Takashi Miike as a Master of Horror because of how effectively he creates thrilling visual shocks is easy.  Receiving less acclaim during any discussion of what makes Miike a noteworthy auteur is his firmly competent handle on how to keep slow-paced exposition compelling in spite of a subdued tempo.

Other reviews and commentaries have criticized “Lesson of the Evil” for stewing overlong in a slow first hour.  Yet much like he did with the opening of “Audition,” what Miike is actually doing is expertly luring viewers into a sense of identification to a real world setting before flipping it upside down with a single finger snap.  When Miike finally agrees it is time to bathe in his signature style of hyper-violence, initial jolts come from having been hypnotized throughout an hour of deliberately timed backstory development.

Initial impressions paint Shinko Academy as little different than any typical overdramatized high school on the CW or Teen Nick.  Students have crushes on teachers.  Teachers have inappropriate relationships with students.  Overly concerned parents, cheating on tests, faculty rivalries, and disciplinary issues facing pupils and instructors alike lay a foundation fraught with enough side story potential to script an entire week’s worth of Lifetime movies.

Mr. Hasumi is mostly respected by his peers, popular with his students, and by extension, well liked by the audience.  Actor Hideaki Ito gives the character a charming charisma tinted with just enough of a shadow to plant a seed of uneasy suspicion regarding his true intentions.  He playfully looks the other way after spotting one teen reading manga in class, helps another foil the extortion attempts of a perverted teacher, and otherwise appears to be an all around sympathetic hero.  Until he unexpectedly starts making out with an underage girl.

That is only the first instance of what becomes increasingly sinister behavior, though.  By the time Hasumi is through, his likable ways turn to devious ones as he becomes involved in torture, staging suicides, and pulling the trigger on a whole slew of gruesome murders.

“Lesson of the Evil” screened at the 2014 Stanley Film Festival in Estes Park, Colorado, which may have been a questionable programming choice given the location’s proximity both to Littleton, where the Columbine High School shooting took place in 1999, and to Aurora, where 12 people were killed in a 2012 movie theater shooting.  I might not have made the connection until I overheard one Colorado native grimace to his friends that he felt the movie was distasteful for “obvious reasons,” which I can only speculate was referring to a personal relationship with one of those two tragedies.

Takashi Miike’s films are usually an acquired taste, and “Lesson of the Evil” definitely fits that bill.  Although it does not take a personal connection to make the reality of the depicted fantasy hit home in an unfortunate way that Miike probably did not intend, it is worth a forewarning to those who are sensitive about content involving school shootings.  Usually, the graphic depiction of violence is what disturbs unsuspecting audiences the most about Miike’s work.  Here, the specific subject matter is potentially just as controversial.

Without becoming insensitively playful, Miike still tries giving his shotgun-blasting finale a surreal tone that lessens the razor sharpness of its brutality.  Some have arguably mistakenly categorized “Lesson of the Evil” with labels of black comedy or subversive satire.  While there are tinges of comedy in how some individual moments are presented, a slow-motion sequence of buckshot thwarting an arrow’s aim comes to mind, Miike is not really suggesting that there is anything inherently funny about the actions occurring onscreen.

But what he is doing is painting the picture with an almost comic book-like presentation while keeping the overall impact intact.  Excessively colorful lights drench every frame of the bloodbath.  The entire setting is played against the backdrop of a school decorated for a festival featuring a house of horrors and a strange moon landing diorama.  When Hasumi’s gun turns into the sinew of a ghost haunting his damaged brain, complete with one eye winking from the gunstock, Miike is proving himself to be a confident filmmaker unafraid to risk betraying his film’s tone with a daring decision for a different direction.

Contrary to those who feel the first half of the movie is too long, that is how the second half comes across.  The climactic massacre goes on for nearly 50 minutes.  The gunfire blasts, blood spray bursts, and gory demises become so excessive that desensitization is the only possible response after a period of time.  With a total runtime of 128 minutes, Miike does belabor “Lesson of the Evil” past a point where its themes can still resonate by overindulging in a carnage confetti shower.

However, I would rather have a drawn out movie that is at least aesthetically interesting no matter where its content meanders or for how long.  The overall value of “Lesson of the Evil” as a meaningful film is debatable, although it is assuredly a demented portrait of a sociopathic psycho like only a twisted visionary can create.  Regardless of its contextual worth, the compelling characterizations, stunning cinematography, and a stylish structure to even the most mundane moments make “Lesson of the Evil” always engaging to watch.

NOTE: The film’s Japanese title is “Aku no kyoten.”

Review Score:  75

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