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Visitor Q Director: Takashi Miike Number of Items: 1 Format: Color Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Running Time: 90 minutes Studio: Media Blasters, Inc Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2002-11-26 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.0 "The family that stays together..." One of the more bizarre films I've ever seen, Takashi Miike's VISITOR Q is about a family that is as dysfunctional as can be. The daughter is a prostitute whose clientele sometimes includes her own ineffectual father, a failed news reporter. The son, who is beat up and tormented daily by school bullies, takes his anger out on his mother by beating her with a cane for any kind of minor infraction. The mother prostitutes herself as well in order to pay for her heroin addiction. (One almost can't blame her for seeking this kind of escape.) Enter the unnamed visitor of the title. After bashing the father in the head with a large rock, he insinuates himself into the household. And then things get weirder. I couldn't make heads or tails of this film. I'm sure it's some kind of commentary on the family unit in modern society, but I'm damned if I can tell what it's saying. On display you'll find incest, necrophilia, copious lactation (and urination), domestic violence, dismemberment, and other things I'd rather not mention here. Yet it fails to be disturbing simply because it is so outrageous. Occasionally it is amusing, but more often it's rather boring. I loved Miike's AUDITION, probably his most serious and artistic film, but I can't recommend this one as anything other than a curiosity item. It's worth picking up just to see some things that you're unlikely to see anywhere else, but don't expect anything coherent. The DVD contains a biography of the director and "liner notes" (useful for those renting.) There are also a few trailers which you must sit through to watch the film. If you try to escape to the main menu the disc will stop playing entirely. I hope that this is an error on the part of the disc authors and not an annoying new trend. "Inspiring Family Meltdown Masterpiece" Man, they do not come around that often and here Miike Takashi delivers on a fine slice of DV filmmaking that can make its counterpart, American Beauty, look like a walk in the park. Obviously shot for the DVD market on a DV camera, this film has style and a whooping ending to boot, although the eastern type storytelling make put off many, not to mention the shock cinema value with very many blatantly upsetting scenes that never really falter from being classy horror-art... and it is... ALL OF IT! Although terribly slow for most who will view a foreign film for the first time, it is well worth it after the first milk scene and after experiencing that jaw dropper you will be hurtled into an amazing assault on your taboo while conjuring up scenes of absolutely brilliant originality. The `dead can get wet' mystery of life scene is probably one of the most dementedly innovative surprises that hits you like a gong from the end sequence in 2001. There are many moments in the movie that will leave your head swirling... you just cannot believe what you are seeing. The story concerns a dysfunctional family, a farther who sleeps with his daughter, has a spiralling downward career as a video reporter, get things done to him on video by criminals, has an abused son who tortures his smack-addicted mother, a bruised and battered woman who turns tricks for a few quid on the side. A stranger with a brick shows up and turns the family upside down, reaching gruesome climatically consequences that have a twist on the nuclear family. The further away from reality it gets the closer we are to home. Manic, but thoroughly a mastermind at work, Miike Takashi has some great films to boot. This one, Dead or Alive, Audition and Ichi the Killer are absolute musts. If you want to see something totally new (and you will), have the patients to allow a little eastern slow-mo into your life and are prepared to see some things truly defying belief then Visitor Q will deliver. To be honest I cannot praise this gem enough. It is a horror movie phenomenon and certainly has a place in my top 10 now. Wow is not enough for it. "ESTOS JAPONESES ESTAN LOCOS!!" Visitor Q, is one of those movies that wont leave your mind for the rest of your life. Takashi Miike does an excellent job in his movie critique about the loss of family life in a very [awkward] way. 4 characters, 4 different lifes tied together by the presence of the misterious Visitor Q, the last hope and tiny bit of conscience that gently follows each one of them and hits them in the head (literally) screaming to make them open their eyes and look at what they have become. This sounds kind of a corny moral lesson, but wait till you see the esence of Miikes metaphors and analogies: breast feeding grown ups, mother abuse, heroin addiction, incest, necrophilya, more violence and defecation with rigor mortis included, just wait and see. This movie is so good, the ending almost made me cry. Sounds really weird? just chek it out. Takashi is god. "Visitor Q" A singular nuclear Japanese family - father, mother, son, daughter - spend a movie committing incest, physical parental abuse, necrophilia, murder and dismemberment, and various other weird and wicked deeds. A mysterious, rock-wielding, scruffy young man joins the family and, eventually, changes occur. Words like `aberrant' and `taboo-bashing' are used inadequately to describe Takashi Miike's VISITOR Q. It's an ink-black dark comedy, one that lingers over and delights in shocking scenes that more polite sleazy movies only hint at. For instance, VISITOR Q opens with an off-camera woman asking "Did you ever do it with your dad?" A question immediately followed by Daughter and Dad haggling over price and service. A disturbing conversation which continues through disrobement to consummation. It's a potentially unendurable scene that ends with Daughter taunting Dad by calling him "early bird." Dad's eventual remorse seems almost an afterthought. This isn't nearly the worst scene in the movie, either. I won't give it away, but that graphic and extended sequence begins with Dad saying "I don't care if you are a corpse...." Strong stuff, but the movie holds its curiously upbeat characters at enough of a distance and blurs the difference between victim and victimizer often enough to make it safely surreal. I liked VISITOR Q without really understanding what it meant or where it took us. For instance, the scruffy young man seemed to be a pivotal character but I don't know why he went around hitting people over the head with rocks. Maybe he was knocking sense into them. Maybe, as another character suggested, he was there to destroy the family. The final sequence is bizarre, a bit shocking, and indecipherable, as well. At least it seemed optimistic. "complete cinematic insanity!" This is definitely my favorite Miike film. Just when i was starting to lose him...ah! Visitor Q came to me highly recommended, and without giving away the insanity that is Miike, I will just say that I did not think I could ever be shocked by him again. He proved me wrong in a drastic way. The premise of this movie is supposed to be the fact that reality television has gone too far and that perhaps it even ignites people to act in ways they normally would not. However! this is really only a very spliced view of the circle this movie encompasses. The guy who plays the unnamed man, or visitor Q is awesome. His part in the movie is the fulcrum point from which everything else unfolds. Enough people have written little pieces of craziness that happen during the film, so I won't get into those. WARNING: do not watch this movie if your mind is planted firmly in the bible belt, actually...don't watch anything by Miike. This film is for people who can deal with culture busters and can view the film for what it really is...Miike perfection.