Movies
[BD Review] Takashi Miike’s ‘Lesson Of The Evil’ Exactly What We’ve Been Wanting!!
Takashi Miike is one of those directors that horror fans seem to be divided over. Is he good? Is he great? is he overrated? Is he not even worth discussing? It’s a division that can often cause horror fans to spiral into insane arguments. Is Audition really that amazing? Is Ichi The Killer really that entertaining? Is One Missed Call any good?
Personally, I find Miike’s work to be engaging, engrossing, and genuinely fascinating. His mix of black humor with intense bursts of visceral violence and tense, nerve-tautening scenes truly appeal to me, all with the understanding that the films also suffer a bit from overstaying their welcome, often times seeming like the would benefit from a simple trim here and there.
And so, with this attitude, I entered into one of his latest films, the teacher-student thriller Lessons Of The Evil, which stars Hideaki Itô (from Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django) as Seiji Hasumi. The basic premise of the film is that Hasumi is a well loved teacher at the local high school. The students adore him, often times confiding in him when they feel no one else will listen. The teachers highly respect him. Even the local police are enamored by his charms. What they don’t realize is that Hasumi is quietly planning the murder of every student in his class.
Much like other Miike films, Lesson Of The Evil builds slowly, characters given time to develop and subplots given attention, thus creating a believable world that deals with issues such as sexual abuse, bullying, and teacher-student relationships.
It’s impossible to not be drawn in by Hasumi’s charm and winning smile. He’s a handsome, well built man who has great energy and charisma. When he teaches his students, he does so with fervor and playfulness. He’s the kind of teacher that we all wish we had or the one that we remember the most. Because of Itô’s fantastic acting abilities, I found that I was unable to stop rooting for him, even as he goes about plotting the death of his class.
When the violence begins, it is fast, it is shocking, and it doesn’t stop. Nearly half of the film is dedicated to the climactic scene where Hasumi stalks the halls of the school at night, picking off one student after another as they decorate and design a haunted house. There is enough gore and blood to satisfy Miike fans and the deaths are in no way tame or restrained, instead compounded by a healthy dose of black humor.
Miike deftly picks his shots, creating some beautiful moments. He also even dives a bit into found footage, cleverly winking at the current genre obsession. At the same time, the sound design and music is given due attention, the recurring theme of The Threepenny Opera adding and adding to the suspense.
As I mentioned above, Miike films often overstay their welcome by a smidge and would benefit from a slightly tighter final cut. However, that doesn’t draw away from how thoroughly entertaining and exciting Lesson Of The Evil is. Miike’s return to ultra-violence is exactly what we’ve been wanting and should absolutely not be missed.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.