Director Takashi Miike is one of Japan's most well known modern directors along with 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano. Miike is easiest to be described as Martin Scoresese & Quentin Tarantino meets David Cronenberg with just a hint of John Waters?s style humor. Outside of Japan however Miike is virtually unknown despite the fact he has about 25+ feature films and several mini-series under his belt and that's just dating back to 1996. What follows is a review of one of the 7 (!) movies Miike has made during 2001.

Visitor Q is the sixth and final part in a Japanese series entitled "Love Cinema," which have nothing to do with each other than having 'Love' involved in the plot without being a romance.

Visitor Q is part family horror, part pseudo-documentary, part drama, part grim comedy about a failed television reporter who decides to make a documentary with the help of his female coworker (who unfortunately on her part later becomes a part of the doc). With his digital camera he films such things as the opening scene which is his prostitute daughter and himself having sex, and his son getting that crap kicked out of him from his classmates (which in return he beats the crap out of his junkie-mother out of angst). This isn't even what half the film is about, a mysterious visitor (that enjoys hitting people with really big rocks) is taken in by the family and in return screws up their already screwed up lives for perhaps the better (or the worse), with an ending that is beyond jacked-up.

Visitor Q is a satire full of touchy subject matter and taboos such as rape, necrophilia, incest, drug addiction, domestic violence, adultery, and sadomasochism among others. Q uses some great cinematography (the psuedo-documentry parts are filmed in dogma style). It somewhat resembles a combination of the last 2 Todd Solondz films, 'Happiness' and the second half of 'Storytelling.' Visitor Q is much different from Miike's earlier films which for the most part are (well-done) movies revolving around the yakuza. Visitor Q is a film that is DEFINETLY not for everyone, in fact if you don't love this then you are probably going to hate it for all it's worth, it's a 'love it or leave it' type of movie, there is no "middle-ground" here folks.

Q has scenes in it, which you are not sure if you should laugh or vomit. By the movie's end you will not look at lactation the same ever again. One seriously, disturbing, black comedy/drama to come from the land of the rising sun.

A bit of reference: For some reason the Internet movie database lists this movie in the 'Family' genre, I'm not too sure what kind of screwed up family bonds with this movie, unless of course they are like the family in it.

Another note: supposedly CO-creator of Troma, Lloyd Kaufman says this is one of the most vile movie he has ever seen.

Yet another note: Visitor Q won 'best film' at the fantasia film festival in Montreal (?) of last year.

"Why did you really come to our home? You came to destroy us, didn't you?.......Thank you."- Quote from Visitor Q

Review from Krokus_McMullet (Stu)