Main cast: Hideaki Itō (Seiji Hasumi), Takayuki Yamada (Tetsuro Shibahara), Mitsuru Fukikoshi (Masanobu Tsurii), Takehiro Hira (Takeki Kume), Shōta Sometani (Keisuke Hayami), Shun Miyazato (Naoki Isada), Fumi Nikaidō (Reika Katagiri), Elina Mizuno (Miya Yasuhara), Kento Hayashi (Masahiko Maejima), Kenta (Masahiro Tadenuma), and Kodai Asaka (Yuichiro Nagoshi)
Director: Takashi Miike

Now, I don’t say this often because I usually don’t review Japanese movies here—I don’t have time to pay attention to the movie scene in that country, to be honest—but Hideaki Itō is one of the most beautiful, gorgeous men on screen if you ask me. Best of all, as Lesson of the Evil shows, he isn’t afraid to get naked (dangling bits not shown, sadly), even if the reason to do so in this film were pretty weird and flimsy reason. Hey, who’s complaining? I see a beautiful naked man, I give my thanks that my eyes are still working.

I don’t know where that “the” in the movie title comes from, as the direct translation of the Japanese title is a more reasonable Lesson of Evil. Maybe it’s a reference to how Mr Hideaki’s character is the villain, just like how he is the hottest and the mostest?

I can’t argue with that logic, because Seiji Hasumi, Mr Hideaki’s character, is a coldly amoral serial killer that murdered his own parents when he was a boy. Somehow he managed to work his way to a British education, and now, a hot, hot, hot—okay, I’ll stop here, promise—hunk, he shows up at Shinko Academy as its new English teacher.

At first, all seems well. He’s popular with all his students and most of the staff, and his only flaw is that godawful cringe-inducing way he speaks in English.

The fun begins when Mr Hasumi cleverly initiates a plan to foil a cheating ring among the students. This triggers off a cold war of sorts, as the students involved attempt to get back at the person that thwarted them.

In the meantime, he disrupts the gym teacher’s coercive affair with a student, only to then seduce the student himself in order to extract the login details to the students’ online forums and start some trouble there for fun. He also blackmails the art teacher after discovering that he is having an affair with a student for favors such as a place for him to conduct his own seduction of emotionally vulnerable students. Oh, annoying parents are getting on his nerves? Nothing a little evening homicide can’t fix.

As the movie progresses, body count racks up. In the meantime, Hasumi fancies himself an acolyte of the god Odin, and feels some affinity to Odin’s raven Munnin. Maybe this is in the novel and manga upon which this movie is based on, I don’t know, as I have never read them, but in the context of this movie, that aspect of Hasumi’s personality feels like mere cosmetic, as is the rest of his fascination with everything German.

Then again, it also doesn’t make sense for him to live in a dilapidated house with barely-there walls, but he does just that, sleeping and bathing naked and openly in the process. I also wonder why the camera will slowly pan over his naked body as he sleeps… as he showers the blood off him… ahem. Where was I?

This movie doesn’t attempt to give Hasumi any softer or human side at all. He’s a monster through and through, exhibiting a boyish, even child-like exuberance at committing various acts of torture and murder. He is also cunning, thinking ahead of his alibis in the event that he gets caught.

Since this is a movie directed and scripted by Takashi Miike, it is actually surprising that it goes off the rails completely only in the late third of the movie, when Hasumi decides that he should move on to his next adventure in serial killing, and proceeds to clean up shop in the most explosive ways possible. While the gore and torture have been fairly restrained up to that point, Hasumi going no holds barred is something straight out of an anime, and that’s when the movie loses a lot of its charm as far as I’m concerned. That whole act just feels too much like a cartoon, and I feel that it kind of turns Hasumi into a cartoon villain, which is tad unworthy of that character.

Still, the high school kids have been relentlessly annoying up to that point, so I suspect quite a number of teachers and other people that have to deal with obnoxious, self-absorbed teenagers in their daily lives may get a quiet sense of thrill watching Hasumi in action.

These kids are dumb too. My favorite is this couple that may be able to get away from Hasumi, if they hadn’t spotted one another and started calling one another’s name at a volume loud enough to wake up the dead. They deserve what they get.

No, wait, my favorite is that idiot that is playing dead until Hasumi walks past him, then he opens his eyes and tells Hasumi that he has to go to Todai—that’s the University of Tokyo. Hasumi just says, “To die?” and gives that imbecile what he truly deserves.

Just be careful with the volume during the final act, by the way. As I’ve mentioned, this act is straight up anime, and appropriately enough, there is so much female screaming at a volume that can probably make dogs weep. Folks with delicate eardrums should approach that act with great care.

So yes, Lesson of the Evil. The whole thing is a mess, and don’t expect logic to hold much. A lot of this movie is style over substance. Still, there’s a gorgeous, charming, and completely cold psychopath here getting naked and ridding the world of annoying teens, so it can’t be a bad film on that merit alone. Just watch it for the cathartic guilty pleasure and the stylish violence, and bask in the work of art that is Hideaki Itō.