Lesson of the Evil

Aku no Kyōten (悪の教典, literally "Lesson of Evil"), known in English as Lesson of the Evil, is a 2012 Japanese thriller film directed by Takashi Miike starring Hideaki Itō. It is an adaptation of Yusuke Kishi's 2010 novel of the same name. A seinen manga under the same name, illustrated by Eiji Karasuyama, was also released in 2012 by Kodansha in Good! Afternoon magazine. The story contains many references to German culture, such as mention of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and a vinyl record playing "Mack the Knife" by Bertolt Brecht.

Aku no Kyōten
Directed by	Takashi Miike
Written by	Takashi Miike
Based on	Aku no Kyōten by Yusuke Kishi
Produced by	Kôji Azuma Tōru Mori Misako Saka
Starring	Hideaki Itō Takayuki Yamada Mitsuru Fukikoshi
Cinematography	Nobuyasu Kita
Edited by	Kenji Yamashita
Music by	Koji Endo
Production company	Toho
Release dates	November 9, 2012 (2012-11-09) (Rome Film Festival) November 10, 2012 (2012-11-10) (Japan)
Running time	128 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Box office	$25.9 million

Plot

Seiji Hasumi, a high school English teacher, is beloved by his students and respected by his peers. However, his outward charm masks his true nature as a sociopath unable to feel empathy for other human beings. Having killed both his parents and his former tutor at the age of 14, Hasumi is a fiendishly clever killer. While living in the United States, Hasumi meets a partner in crime, an American named Clay, who thinks he shares the same "hobby" as Hasumi–killing people for fun. The two carry buckets full of human blood and body parts somewhere, giving off the notion that they committed numerous murders together. Hasumi eventually kills Clay by knocking him out and burning him alive inside a barrel, stating that while Clay enjoys killing for fun, Hasumi does not.

Back in Japan, Hasumi deals with problems like bullying, statutory rape and cheating. Upon collecting all of the students' cell phones prior to their exams, Hasumi secretly uses a cell phone jammer to prevent cheating. The group of students that had cheated on previous exams become suspicious after their cell phones lose service during the test and suspect Tsurii, the adviser of the Radio Club. They are confronted by Tsurii, who clarifies that he was not responsible for the jamming. Meanwhile, a father who had complained about the bullying of his daughter, Rina, dies when someone replaces the bottles of water around his house with kerosene; which explodes when he tries to smoke a cigarette.

Tsurii soon meets with the ringleader of the cheating group, Keisuke, explaining that he has dug into Hasumi's past and discovered that four students died of apparent suicides at his previous school. However, Hasumi, having bugged the room, confronts Tsurii on a train and kills him, making his death appear as a suicide by hanging. Hasumi then confronts Keisuke when the announcement of Tsurii's suicide causes him to panic. Hasumi knocks Keisuke out and ties him up until after school, after which Hasumi tortures him into admitting that he and his friends were cheating. Hasumi checks that Keisuke didn't tell others of Tsurii's suspicions before killing him and hiding his body.

Meanwhile, Hasumi learns that Shibahara, the physical education teacher, is blackmailing a student, Miya, into giving him sexual favors. After he helps her eliminate Shibahara's leverage, Hasumi and Miya become lovers. Hasumi also finds out about art teacher Kume's sexual relationship with a male student; he blackmails Kume into lending him his luxury apartment. Hasumi later takes Miya to the apartment, and the two have sex. Hasumi presses Miya into giving him access to an online private discussion board that the students use, anonymously making claims about the murder of Rina's father, accusing delinquent student Tadenuma. After a fight breaks out at school, Hasumi invites Tadenuma out for a drink and kills him; the students later assume that Tadenuma ran away from home.

Hasumi's homeroom students stay overnight in the school, preparing an elaborate haunted house for the school cultural festival. When Miya grows suspicious of Tadenuma's disappearance, Hasumi lures Miya to the rooftop, knocks her out and throws her off the roof to fake her suicide. When another student comes to the roof looking for Miya, she finds a suicide note forged by Hasumi; he quickly kills her, too. As Hasumi has no method of masking his murder of the second student, he decides to massacre his students, for which he will frame Kume by wearing his shoes throughout the killings. As the students hear the discharge of the shotgun, Hasumi tricks most of the students by using the intercom to order the students to proceed to the roof, which he has already locked. With some of the students proceeding to the roof, another group hides inside the art room, closing it off with fire shutters and barricading the entry points.

One of the students, Kakeru, manages to escape the school far enough with his archery gear to find a man who is able to call the police. He later runs back to the school to rescue his crush Satomi, found trying to escape by roping out of the art room window; she slips and breaks her ankles. Kakeru screams out her name, alerting Hasumi to their presence, and he proceeds to aim out of a window at the two students. Kakeru readies an arrow and fires at Hasumi, but Hasumi fires as well, deflecting the arrow off-course, killing both Kakeru and Satomi. With the group of students still in the art room thinking they are safe, they are unaware that they did not untie the rope that Satomi had used to rappel down. Hasumi climbs the rope and proceeds to slay the group.

The massacre climaxes with two students dressing up two dead peers in their clothing and hiding inside the school. They toss the corpses down an emergency escape chute, tricking Hasumi into thinking the bodies are the last two students on his checklist attempting to escape. After the massacre, Hasumi tries to cover up his actions by making it seem like he had been handcuffed and knocked out by Kume and making it look like he committed suicide afterward with Hasumi's shotgun, but his plans are foiled when one of the two surviving students points out to police that the school's training defibrillator records audio and contains evidence of one of the murdered students speaking Hasumi's name before being slain. As he is arrested, Hasumi plans to use his recently learned knowledge of Norse mythology as his legal defense by suggesting his acts are "the will of God." The surviving student exclaims that Hasumi is crazy, but the other surviving student says Hasumi is "starting the next game." It is then revealed that Miya survived after Hasumi tossed her off the roof and calls out Hasumi's name, ending the movie with "to be continued."

Cast

• Hideaki Itō as Seiji Hasumi
• Takayuki Yamada as Tetsuro Shibahara
• Mitsuru Fukikoshi as Masanobu Tsurii
• Takehiro Hira as Takeki Kume
• Shōta Sometani as Keisuke Hayami
• Shun Miyazato as Naoki Isada
• Fumi Nikaidō as Reika Katagiri
• Elina Mizuno as Miya Yasuhara
• Kento Hayashi as Masahiko Maejima
• Kenta as Masahiro Tadenuma
• Kodai Asaka as Yuichiro Nagoshi
• Jodi Lynn Smith as Suzanna Carter

Release

The film premiered at the Rome Film Festival on November 9, 2012. It was selected to screen at the Stanley Film Festival in April 2014.

Reception

Jay Weissberg of Variety gave the movie a negative review, calling it "nothing more than a slick slasher pic" and pointing out its debatable taste: "Even were the memory of the Breivik massacre, among others, not so fresh, there's something deeply unseemly about turning a high-school bloodbath into an adrenaline-pumping pleasure ride."

Jessica Kiang pans the movie, calling it "overlong and incoherent" and "sadly more bore than gore". She doesn't see any deeper meaning in this either: "It's just too silly to lay a claim to any philosophy, even nihilism."

Jonathan Barkan of the horror website Bloody Disgusting calls the movie "thoroughly entertaining and exciting", but criticizes that it overstays its welcome and would "benefit from a slightly tighter final cut."

Lesson of the Evil earned $25.9 million at the Japanese box office.

External links

• Official website
• Lesson of the Evil at IMDb