Lesson of the Evil 2012

Seiji Hasumi [Hideaki Ito] is introduced as a beloved English teacher whose charm hides a dangerous truth. A graduate of Harvard with an MBA, he spent two years at Morgenstern, a European investment bank, before returning to Japan to teach high school. From the outside, he seems impeccably confident and enlightened, yet his internal landscape is defined by a startling lack of empathy. He lives with a chilling antisocial personality, a condition that surfaces as he navigates the worlds of students and colleagues with a cold, strategic eye. His early years reveal a troubling pattern: by fourteen, he had already killed both parents and his former tutor, a dark preface to a life spent watching, calculating, and pouncing when it suits him. In flashbacks to his time in the United States, Hasumi forms a disturbingly coordinated partnership with an American killer named Dave, a bond that is as gleefully violent as it is chillingly clinical. The two are seen carrying buckets of blood, bones, and organs, underscoring a history of gruesome acts. Eventually, Hasumi ends that partnership by subduing Dave and burning him alive in a barrel, insisting that their hobbies differ—Dave thrives on killing for fun, while Hasumi does not.

Back in Japan, Hasumi channels his misanthropy into what looks like reform. He takes aim at problems like bullying and sexual harassment in the school, using calculated moves to assert control. He begins by confiscating all students’ cell phones prior to exams and secretly deploying a cell phone jammer to eliminate cheating, presenting himself as the morally decisive voice the school needs. The jamming raises suspicion among the student body, particularly among a group whose cheating history makes them anxious about the loss of an advantage. Their suspicions turn toward the school’s Radio Club adviser, a loner physics teacher named Masanobu Tsurii [Mitsuru Fukikoshi], who insists he is not involved. This clash triggers a fraught cat-and-mouse dynamic as Hasumi tests the limits of his influence and Tsurii digs into Hasumi’s past, uncovering unsettling details from Hasumi’s early teaching career that linked to a string of suicides at another school.

Meanwhile, a separate thread unfolds around a blackmail plot involving Miya Katagiri [Fumi Nikaido], a student who is caught shoplifting. The school’s PE teacher, Shibahara, uses recorded admissions of guilt to coerce Miya into sexual favors, a moral crime Hasumi recognizes and neutralizes, telling Miya that a blackmail and statutory rape case would be far more dangerous than shoplifting. Their uneasy alliance deepens as Miya eventually becomes Hasumi’s lover, a dangerous tangled web that intertwines vulnerability with control. As Hasumi regains leverage, he leverages Miya’s access to a private online student forum to publish allegations against a fellow delinquent, a plot designed to foment unrest and test loyalties within the student body.

Hasumi’s calculus grows bolder as he notices the school’s more vulnerable figures. He targets art teacher Takeki Kume [Takehiro Hira], manipulating Kume into lending him a luxury apartment after exposing Kume’s sexual relationship with a male student. Hasumi then imposes his own narrative of legitimacy by pressuring Miya to provide access to an anonymous student discussion board, stirring rumors and planting accusations that will help him orchestrate a broader upheaval. As tensions rise, Hasumi arranges a brutal mounting of fear and manipulation, all while maintaining the veneer of a responsible mentor.

On the night of the school festival’s haunted-house setup, the situation erupts into a devastating trap. Hasumi lures Miya onto the roof, knocks her unconscious, and makes it appear as if she has committed suicide. When another student seeks Miya, he discovers the forged suicide note and realizes Hasumi’s scheme has moved to the next stage. Hasumi then switches focus to a mass killing of his students, framing Kume as the culprit by improperly wearing Kume’s shoes during the oncoming carnage. Throughout the massacre, Hasumi’s shotgun seems almost possessed by his former partner Dave, whispering through the intercom and heightening the sense of omnipresent surveillance. He tricks the remaining students into believing an intruder with a shotgun is on the loose and orders them to retreat to the roof, where he has already cut off access.

Two students do manage to survive by disguising two dead peers and hiding in the school’s interior as they slip away through an emergency chute. Yet the body count continues to rise as the roof becomes a hunting ground for Hasumi, who relentlessly pursues those who remain. Kakeru, a skilled archer, fights back and aims at Hasumi, only to be killed in the exchange, while Satomi Shirai [Mayu Matsuoka] is fatally wounded during the chaos. With most students accounted for, the survivors on the ground floor try to regroup, and Hasumi’s plan to cover his tracks begins to unravel. He attempts to stage a police-appearing handcuffing and a sham suicide, using the defeatist narrative to claim a higher, mythic purpose for his actions.

A crucial turn comes when one of the surviving students reveals that a training defibrillator at the school recorded a voice naming Hasumi as the killer before the deaths occurred. That audio provides a hard piece of evidence that undercuts Hasumi’s carefully constructed excuses. He turns to an austere defense drawn from Norse mythology, attempting to cast his acts as “the will of God” rather than cold, rational crime. Yet the survivors dispute this interpretation, and one notes that Hasumi is clearly unhinged, turning the “game” into a relentless, dangerous test of power. The other survivor hints that Hasumi is already preparing the next iteration of his “game,” signaling that the violence may not be over. In a final twist, Miya survives the rooftop fall and calls out Hasumi’s name, leaving the audience with a chilling sense that the story is far from finished, a sentiment echoed by the film’s final line—“to be continued.”

to be continued.