Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

HeadlinesExotic Boring

christopher-underwood This begins so well - fabulous photography and cool horror, measured and mysterious. Many elements of Japanese school and teenage life are introduced, including sophisticated methods of cheating at exams, teacher harassment of girls and boys and bullying. Indeed for most of the film we are intrigued and fascinated and even appalled as matters progress. It is just that instead of all this leading up to some revelatory or vengeful denouement we get 30/40 minutes constant and irrational slaughter in which we have no interest or involvement in at all. Perhaps the film should have run backwards and the early scenes be seen as explanatory but presented in the manner before us it appears sterile and uninteresting however colourful and violent.

Snaggletooth . By now I've settled well into the view that good horror comes with a non-English soundtrack. It just gets proved so often that the USA can't compete with what's coming out of foreign shores (shown too by it's remaking of many of these) . Of course this isn't 100% guaranteed, and sadly Lesson of the Evil fails to deliver apart from the last 15 or so minutes.The film is slow. I accept we need to experience the character development of the protagonist here but at times it's like watching some late night oriental drama that has nothing going for it. True, by now I know that many Japanese, or Korean flicks start off slow and then hit you like a shovel in the face with a barrage of blood and gore, but LOTE climaxed with a series of gunshots which was OK, but just not that amazing.I expected much more from this movie as it was highly recommended to me and it cost a fair bit of money to buy. But the pay off just didn't do it for me, and the way it ended was plain daft too with it looking as if we are getting a sequel. If you can get it cheap on VOD by all means give it a watch, but don't pay out any big money for it. You could even skip to the last 15 or 20mins too if you get bored and want to see the good stuff.

ebossert Note: Check me out as the "Asian Movie Enthusiast" on YouTube, where I review tons of Asian movies.Lesson of the Evil (2012) (Japanese Horror) A popular high school teacher concocts an extreme plan to deal with the rise of bullying and bad behavior among the student body in this film by Takashi Miike. Right off the bat, this film offers something interesting by having the antagonist as the main character. There's a lot of interesting content here, which includes story and character development. The viewer really needs to pay attention to the details in order to understand everything that is going on, which creates a thought-provoking experience. The pacing script does do a good job of slowly revealing the anti-hero's personality - which is oddly charismatic. I've never been a fan of Hideaki Ito, but even I'll admit that he gives a fantastic performance here. The structure of the film also makes it difficult to predict which students will survive (if any). Miike is perhaps at the most assured phase of his entire career as he has become one of the most reliable directors in the world today. Needless to say, the direction is solid.Now, there may be some controversy regarding the long-sustaining finale that uses a certain kind of graphic violence against school kids. Despite the somewhat repetitive nature of the deaths, they do have a disturbing essence due to similar real-life events. Most ironically, there's also some dry black humor present, which could offend some viewers. In any case, the finale is deliciously entertaining and exciting.If one adds "Lesson of the Evil" to "Goosebumps: The Movie", "Horror Stories", "Kotsutsubo", and the final installment to the "Hellsing Ultimate" anime films, it looks like 2012 is going to be a strong year for Asian horror.

R-P-McMurphy A very cool movie, its also hilarious, but definitely not for everyone. It might just be Takashi Miike's most mainstream movie of his that I've seen, but still pretty crazy as always.Its basically a thriller comedy about a likable teacher who goes on killing students and parents making it look like a suicide.Before you watch it, you have to know what you're in for, its one of those movies that doesn't take itself seriously, its satiric for most of the time and it knows just when to be funny. The story is pretty ridiculous, but it manages to be unexpected and thrilling, its also gory and pretty funny, it had the whole audience laughing.On the other hand, it was kind of messy like every other Takashi film, but these messy sequences and flashbacks are relieved by other scenes with interesting music choices that fit perfectly into whats going on, even adding a little humor to it, and some dance moments and funny dialogue by the students at the wrong moment. It felt similar to the first "Scream" and reminded me in some ways to the ridiculousness in Robert Rodriguez movies.I'd recommend it to people who liked "Django Unchained", "Battle Royale", "Machete", "Videodrome", "A Clockwork Orange", or any Takashi Miike film.