Lesson of the Evil

High school English teacher Hasumi is the man everyone likes: handsome, quick, attentive to his students' problems. He is also a psychopath. When a cheating scandal, predatory colleagues and his own past stack up, he applies his only solution. Takashi Miike directed, from Yusuke Kishi's novel. Hideaki Ito plays Hasumi; Fumi Nikaido is one of the students. The film breaks in two, and the second half is a nearly unbroken massacre. Miike gives the last half hour to a classroom hunted with a shotgun, staging the escapes with comic timing, which is why that stretch drew most of the argument. The closing openly promises more. No sequel was ever made; the film ends like part one of a trilogy and stays there. The oddest touch is the pair of ravens in Hasumi's house, tied to Huginn and Muninn from Norse myth. Who it is for: viewers who come knowing Miike's cruelty. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot sit through school violence at length.