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#499 - Visitor Q
Takashi Miike, 2001
The members of a highly dysfunctional family have their lives changed when a mysterious stranger comes to live in their home.
I generally don't go out of my way to view films that could be classified as "extreme" cinema, and after having seen Visitor Q I now remember why. Out of the other three Miike films I've seen, two of them also showcased his capacity for perversely graphic imagery (The Bird People in China was an exception); Ichi the Killer was a cartoonishly hyper-violent crime movie and thus my opinion of it is generally unfavourable, but I did see Audition recently and could at least appreciate that its more graphic content worked within the context of its slow-burning psychological thriller narrative. Visitor Q, on the other hand, is a leaner film (clocking in at under 90 minutes) that is intended above all else to be a satire, but in doing so it constantly assaults your sensibilities by showcasing the actions of four members of an incredibly depraved family. The father is a disgraced employee of a television station who is desperately trying to achieve professional notability by any means necessary, even if that resorts to exploiting his other family members by documenting their lives with his camera. The mother is a heroin addict due to her suffering frequent physical abuse at the hands of her son, who is himself constantly bullied by a trio of classmates that are willing to launch fireworks into the family's home when they're not beating him senseless outside it. Meanwhile, there's the daughter who ran away from home to become a sex worker and has no qualms about taking on her own father as a client. Things all start to change when a mysterious stranger (presumably the visitor of the title) bashes the father in the head with a rock and then comes to live with the family for...some reason.
I can definitely see what kind of film Miike and his collaborators are trying to go for - one can easily pick apart a satire of not just your typical dysfunctional family comedies where the dysfunction is taken to grotesquely absurd degrees but also the growing desensitisation to said absurdity caused by the digital age. This much is apparent given the film's status as an experiment in low-budget digital video filmmaking, which is amply reflected by the father obsessing over rebuilding his journalistic reputation by filming everything in the hopes that it'll make him famous. This reaches an incredibly absurd level when he settles on filming the bullies who are constantly targeting his son and trying to pitch the concept to a thoroughly unimpressed co-worker as a documentary series that focuses on how his son's victimisation affects him personally. As the already-unhinged family members start to act in increasingly depraved ways (which is no mean feat), the mysterious visitor either encourages them on their own twisted journeys or captures them on camera per the father's request and nobody (well, not in the family, anyway) really seems to question his continued presence, as if a camera-wielding stranger hanging around their home is just one more thing to tolerate. Whatever satirical elements are brought to the table are more or less buried by Miike's tendency to invoke a number of deliberately disgusting subjects as part of his treatise and showing them in unflinching detail. He does this to the point where it seems to actively harm the film rather than help it, especially since it is all being played for laughs and there are few things that are worse than an unfunny comedy.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Visitor Q turned out to be such an unpleasant experience. Not only are the plot events I outlined above played for extremely dark comedy, but they don't even begin to describe some of the seriously messed-up things that happen in this film. The climax of Gaspar Noé's I Stand Alone is preceded by a flashing intertitle warning viewers that they have thirty seconds to leave the theatre before the film gets really bad, causing viewers to acknowledge whether or not they could bring themselves to handle whatever Noé was about to show next. Visitor Q has a similar scene towards the end, though it definitely signposts what is about to happen next as if to warn viewers that now would probably be the best time to bail on the film if they hadn't already. I persevered through to the end, but I definitely feel like the third act's developments shattered what little goodwill I still had towards this incredibly twisted piece of cinema. I get what Miike and co. are going for, but despite their best attempts the extremely shocking imagery never quite manages to make the leap from plain sick to sickly funny and, though I grant that it's at least got an illusion of depth that separates it from low-grade shock-horror like The Human Centipede, that's still not enough to stop me from giving it half a popcorn box on basic principles. A thoroughly abhorrent experience.
Takashi Miike, 2001
The members of a highly dysfunctional family have their lives changed when a mysterious stranger comes to live in their home.
I generally don't go out of my way to view films that could be classified as "extreme" cinema, and after having seen Visitor Q I now remember why. Out of the other three Miike films I've seen, two of them also showcased his capacity for perversely graphic imagery (The Bird People in China was an exception); Ichi the Killer was a cartoonishly hyper-violent crime movie and thus my opinion of it is generally unfavourable, but I did see Audition recently and could at least appreciate that its more graphic content worked within the context of its slow-burning psychological thriller narrative. Visitor Q, on the other hand, is a leaner film (clocking in at under 90 minutes) that is intended above all else to be a satire, but in doing so it constantly assaults your sensibilities by showcasing the actions of four members of an incredibly depraved family. The father is a disgraced employee of a television station who is desperately trying to achieve professional notability by any means necessary, even if that resorts to exploiting his other family members by documenting their lives with his camera. The mother is a heroin addict due to her suffering frequent physical abuse at the hands of her son, who is himself constantly bullied by a trio of classmates that are willing to launch fireworks into the family's home when they're not beating him senseless outside it. Meanwhile, there's the daughter who ran away from home to become a sex worker and has no qualms about taking on her own father as a client. Things all start to change when a mysterious stranger (presumably the visitor of the title) bashes the father in the head with a rock and then comes to live with the family for...some reason.
I can definitely see what kind of film Miike and his collaborators are trying to go for - one can easily pick apart a satire of not just your typical dysfunctional family comedies where the dysfunction is taken to grotesquely absurd degrees but also the growing desensitisation to said absurdity caused by the digital age. This much is apparent given the film's status as an experiment in low-budget digital video filmmaking, which is amply reflected by the father obsessing over rebuilding his journalistic reputation by filming everything in the hopes that it'll make him famous. This reaches an incredibly absurd level when he settles on filming the bullies who are constantly targeting his son and trying to pitch the concept to a thoroughly unimpressed co-worker as a documentary series that focuses on how his son's victimisation affects him personally. As the already-unhinged family members start to act in increasingly depraved ways (which is no mean feat), the mysterious visitor either encourages them on their own twisted journeys or captures them on camera per the father's request and nobody (well, not in the family, anyway) really seems to question his continued presence, as if a camera-wielding stranger hanging around their home is just one more thing to tolerate. Whatever satirical elements are brought to the table are more or less buried by Miike's tendency to invoke a number of deliberately disgusting subjects as part of his treatise and showing them in unflinching detail. He does this to the point where it seems to actively harm the film rather than help it, especially since it is all being played for laughs and there are few things that are worse than an unfunny comedy.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Visitor Q turned out to be such an unpleasant experience. Not only are the plot events I outlined above played for extremely dark comedy, but they don't even begin to describe some of the seriously messed-up things that happen in this film. The climax of Gaspar Noé's I Stand Alone is preceded by a flashing intertitle warning viewers that they have thirty seconds to leave the theatre before the film gets really bad, causing viewers to acknowledge whether or not they could bring themselves to handle whatever Noé was about to show next. Visitor Q has a similar scene towards the end, though it definitely signposts what is about to happen next as if to warn viewers that now would probably be the best time to bail on the film if they hadn't already. I persevered through to the end, but I definitely feel like the third act's developments shattered what little goodwill I still had towards this incredibly twisted piece of cinema. I get what Miike and co. are going for, but despite their best attempts the extremely shocking imagery never quite manages to make the leap from plain sick to sickly funny and, though I grant that it's at least got an illusion of depth that separates it from low-grade shock-horror like The Human Centipede, that's still not enough to stop me from giving it half a popcorn box on basic principles. A thoroughly abhorrent experience.