I actually retired from Asian horror films some time ago after becoming completely sick of seeing samey ghost story rubbish. However, I've been getting more and more into exploitation flicks recently, and so decided to give them another chance. My first port of call was highly rated director Takashi Miike's highly rated 'Visitor Q'. I'd already seen Audition, and while I didn't like it much, I do rate it as one of the better modern Asian horror films. So, I went into this with sensible expectations; and unfortunately, found only boredom. I suppose this movie is actually really clever and it just went over my head, but what it seemed like to me was simply a collection of violent and nasty scenes with little or no coherency between them. Any comparisons to the work of Luis Bunuel and David Lynch is blasphemous as far as I'm concerned; all Miike has done here is make a film; any intelligence surrounding it has been implemented by pretentious fans, desperate to find some kind of meaning. My headache set in about 10 minutes in (after a father had sex with his daughter for some reason), and it didn't subside until the movie finally ended; at least twenty four hours later, or so it would seem. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against violence in movies and in fact actively seek out the most notorious films around; but while this may be violent, it's also pointless and boring and I didn't get one ounce of enjoyment out of it. Takashi Miike may have a lot of fans, but I'm certainly not one of them; and I certainly hope this is the last time I'll come into contact with one of his films.
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