Visitor Q
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Movie Reviews of Visitor Q
Movie Review: More touching than twisted...
Summary: 5 Stars
The plot is a simple family drama. The father feels like a failure. The daughter is a depressed runaway. The younger brother is bullied and resents his family for not caring. The mother (the center of the family, and the one with the power to bring them all together) feels empty and unloved. A mysterious young man follows the father home one day and silently observes the family throughout their misadventures. He is the catalyst for change. He is Visitor Q.
In reading the reviews of Visitor Q there seems to be two camps; those that like the movie and love this "sick" family, and those that don't like it because they don't get it. I'm suprised that both points of view seem to be taking this movie at face value. The way I see it, the "twisted" acts portrayed in the movie are not real, but are actually exaggerated metapors of what the characters feel and struggle with.
In one scene, the younger brother who is constantly bullied (again, in a manner that is over the top and "unreal"), is having dinner with the rest of the family. The bullies are outside the house yelling and screaming at him. Eventually they launch fireworks into the house and almost set the place a blaze. The family just sits there nonchalantly eating and passing around food. This is not real. It is a metaphor showing how the family is unconcerned with the brother's struggle with the bullies.
The interesting thing (and I think the root of all the confusion) is the way Miike shot this film. It's shot digital with lots of handheld shots, giving it a shockingly objective, almost documentary feel. I think this causes viewers to accept what they see, and either laugh or turn away in disgust, instead of breaking it down in order to find the real meaning. In other words, the family is real, the emotions are real, the drama is real, the extreme acts are metaphors.
So then why does this movie contain drug use, necrophilia, incest, prostitution, violence and a couple of murders? And why are these things treated nonchalantly by seemingly normal, middle class people? Well like I said I believe they are metaphors, but I also think Miike is making a cultural statement. In a time of so much cynicism, desensitization, and commercial sex and violence, basic family values can and must be held sacred.
There are some disturbing scenes in this movie. There are some wacky humerous scenes aswell. Despite all of this, Miike has somehow made a truly heartfelt movie about the importance of family. You want this family to work. You want to see them smile. And when they finally do, you'll be happy you stuck it out with them.
Movie Review: Pure unadulterated genius
Summary: 5 Stars
While the argument that this film's only aim is to achieve controversy is pursuasive, it is by no means conclusive.Yes, it has necrophilia, incest, prostitution and intense violence, but to talk only about these things reduces the film to a petty little gratuitous teenage-angst rant. Or, as one reviewer has claimed, this is shock value without purpose, place, or reason is somewhat naive.
The film is a work of genius. No question about it.
Takashi Miike displays the carnivalesque workings of the body to the full. Where others have chosen to shy away, Miike explores every crevice of the grotesque, literally dissecting it to its corporeal elements to discover just exactly where are heads are at. The dead body is central to the film. Typical outdated stereotypes of the human mind, and indeed of Japan, are discarded along with the decaying flesh. Namely, preoccupations with politeness, taste, manners, and rational, institutional values are laughed at and abused. These things, along with sexual life, eating, drinking, and defecation have radically changed their meaning.
The film is made in a time where Japan and its people are questioning and trying to define themselves. The warm closed insular security of the Japanese economic womb has been violently ruptured. Jobs and moral values are no longer stable in modern Japan. Just exactly does it mean to be Japanese? A number of western influences confuse the cultural collage that is Japan in a time where not many things are stable. Boundaries that did exist are no longer there. Being polite, reserved and rational with a nice institution to support you is no longer Japan.
And this is where Miike comes in. Miike explores boundaries and then seeks to subvert them. Sexual boundaries do not exist. One is free to have sex with one's daughter or drink the breast-milk from your wife because there is no where to stop when there are no borders. By pushing the boundaries and bringing them to the fore, Miike questions what exactly makes us tick. Where are we when there is no one to define us? We may have the trappings of civilized beings, but we are after all bestial.
The home video camera work gives the film a haunting sense of reality and naturalness to what was previously considered to be unnatural. The dark sense of humour permeating through this real texture transcends this film from generic classification. It is a grotesque carnivalesque romp mocking the polite film establishment, reality TV and society and repressive stereo types.
It questions why we find such interest in watching these things, and most disturbingly, what should we feel when we watch them.
Movie Review: Inspiring Family Meltdown Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Man, they do not come around that often and here Miike Takashi delivers on a fine slice of DV filmmaking that can make its counterpart, American Beauty, look like a walk in the park. Obviously shot for the DVD market on a DV camera, this film has style and a whooping ending to boot, although the eastern type storytelling make put off many, not to mention the shock cinema value with very many blatantly upsetting scenes that never really falter from being classy horror-art... and it is... ALL OF IT!
Although terribly slow for most who will view a foreign film for the first time, it is well worth it after the first milk scene and after experiencing that jaw dropper you will be hurtled into an amazing assault on your taboo while conjuring up scenes of absolutely brilliant originality. The `dead can get wet' mystery of life scene is probably one of the most dementedly innovative surprises that hits you like a gong from the end sequence in 2001. There are many moments in the movie that will leave your head swirling... you just cannot believe what you are seeing.
The story concerns a dysfunctional family, a farther who sleeps with his daughter, has a spiralling downward career as a video reporter, get things done to him on video by criminals, has an abused son who tortures his smack-addicted mother, a bruised and battered woman who turns tricks for a few quid on the side. A stranger with a brick shows up and turns the family upside down, reaching gruesome climatically consequences that have a twist on the nuclear family. The further away from reality it gets the closer we are to home.
Manic, but thoroughly a mastermind at work, Miike Takashi has some great films to boot. This one, Dead or Alive, Audition and Ichi the Killer are absolute musts. If you want to see something totally new (and you will), have the patients to allow a little eastern slow-mo into your life and are prepared to see some things truly defying belief then Visitor Q will deliver.
To be honest I cannot praise this gem enough. It is a horror movie phenomenon and certainly has a place in my top 10 now. Wow is not enough for it.
Movie Review: I saw this at 15 and i couldn't finish it
Summary: 5 Stars
I was 15 once and during that time of my life I watch pretty much anything Japanese until I watch Audition (a film with one of the longest torture sequences I've ever seen using needles) and Visitor Q (A movie filled with violence and malice. With a son beating his mother relentlessly for the first half of the movie.) I stopped for years watching any live action Japanese film besides the occasional Samurai film I avoided them like the plague.
I wasn't even able to finish Visitor Q, stopping it half way through. But of last night I decided to watch it again to see why it freaked me out so much. And it still freaked me out honestly, but I kept going with it and let the movie play out, finally after the half way mark of this film it turned around and became a amazing, yet odd family film. Leaving me with the amazing warm feeling of love, that blow me away, when my first reaction to this film was to run and never turn back.
The film starts off harsh and doesn't relent until after the half way mark but until then the characters never try to reclaim their lives, as they are in the beginning they're all just people lost in their own lives and torture. The mother being a heroin addict, the son beating his own mother after every day being beaten up by the kids at school, and they're father being laughed at by everyone because he can't last long when he goes to bed with someone.
Then they start to find them selves, some of this comes from violence, extreme sexuality, and some of it come from finding the mother in side them, that they are more then a piece of meat. Through this the family bonds and becomes a whole family under a strong mother a father. They learn to grow up as well as know when they need to be a child.
This film is amazing, harsh and brutal to watch, I did stop watching Japanese film for 5 year because of this film and other film by Takashi Miike. But I'm back and I love them they have a way of discovering the human inside us all that we want so much to hide though when I comes out it has sometime the beauty to bring a family together.
Movie Review: Fun for the whole family
Summary: 5 Stars
This has to be the most outrageous and funnist movie I have ever seen. I think that the only taboo that wasn't covered was bestiality - maybe Takashi Miike's next movie. And to think that this film was actually shown on television in Japan - which I suppose is why (at least in my NR-version of the film) genitals were blurred out. Makes you wonder what type of subject matter the Japanese would consider as poor taste or out of bounds. In the U.S. this movie wouldn't even make it past the ratings board without getting an X rating. Some of the other reviewers wrote thorough enough synopses, so I won't repeat all that. I'll just say what I liked about the movie.
For one one thing I liked the way the movie keeps you off balance. As soon as you think you've got a line on what's happening the next scene knocks everything out of wack. For example the young son repeatedly beats his mother (while his father just ignores the situation) but as soon as the boy is alone in his bedroom or on his way to school, we learn that he is being abused by a group of bullies. The mother's seduction scene with the visitor turns into - well you just have to see it to believe it. Let's just say that you will never look at a mother nursing her baby the same way again. I have to say the funniest scene takes place in the kitchen when the visitor goes to the mother to ask for a plastic garbage bag (to put the body parts belonging to the young lady that the father plans to dismember) - again, words just cannot describe the scene. I swear my jaw dropped opened more than once.
I don't look at movies like this and try to find some deeper meaning. I find that distracts from the enjoyment of the movie. I just want to sit back and be entertained - and I was.