Visitor Q

Synopsis: A suburban family is at the point of collapse. The father is paying his prostitute daughter for sex. The son is beating up his mother in a more and more sadistic manner. To deal with the beatings the mother has taken to prostitution and is a heroine addict. There seems to be no way out for them until they bond through murder and necrophilia.

Anyone expecting the ultra violent action of Ichi the Killer (2002) or Fudoh (1996) is in for a big surprise, even those of you who enjoyed the bizarre sexuality of Gozo will be shocked. Hell, even for those who survived the torture and humiliation of Audition (1992) this will elicit a gasp. The thing with the films of Takashi Miike is that you never ever know what to expect and with Visitor Q he will confound every viewer’s expectations once more with his incredibly strange and disturbing look into the lives of an extremely weird family. The performances are convincingly natural and add to the viewer’s unease whilst its documentary style make the film all too real to watch. Kenischi Endo will be familiar to Miike fans from Dead or Alive 2 and Shungiku Uchida, who plays the mother, is in fact a famous Japanese Manga artist.

Visitor Q is Miike’s take on subversive cinema, his tribute to the likes of Richard Kern and Nick Dread and the no-budget New York transgressive cinema. Whilst many of his films, no matter how disturbing, have a flashy crowd-pleasing style and a few “what the?” moments that will leave half the audience laughing in disbelief and the other the running for the exit, Visitor Q is a shot on high definition video as a grittily presented slice of life. To go into too much detail will spoil the effect that Miike intended but this is strong stuff. Surreal and dumbfounding and definitely not to everyone’s taste.

There is a sense of humour lurking in the background but comparing it with, say, John Waters Pink Flamingos (1972) with its cinematic smorgasbord of filmic atrocities it lacks that devil-may-care irony that Waters brought to his films. There is a serious message about the corruption of the modern Japanese family here and Miike doesn’t pull any punches. It’s a tough film to watch, let alone review and in summary, I cannot say it’s an enjoyable experience. Strictly for those who like to be challenged.

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