One sometimes stumbles across films by chance after conducting a certain search, and we're not necessarily inclined to expect much of these random selections. I definitely would have never discovered this 2018 release if I hadn't been looking for Japanese horror. And, well, maybe I'd have been better off not discovering it in the first place. While I can't claim any familiarity with filmmaker Yamamoto Jun'ichi otherwise, I did greatly enjoy 2005's 'Meatball machine,' which he co-directed. I don't know how 'Violator' came to be, Yamamoto's brainchild as both writer and director, but I am distinctly unimpressed.
The premise is interesting enough. The writing, however, is absolutely terrible. Rotten, amateurish dialogue, confused and childish scene writing, and juvenile, vacuous characterizations fill a narrative that is founded upon a general idea and then actively shuns sensible, cohesive substance as soon as it begins. Yamamoto's direction is lazy, lackadaisical, and perfectly ineffective, making each passing moment increasingly tiresome and vexing in turn as the man seems all but entirely incapable, here, of piecing a movie together. The actors do what they can under these circumstances, but mostly they boorishly overact under Yamamoto's guidance, and elsewhere they flounder, seemingly unsure of what to do. No actor is left untouched. This is one of the flimsiest, most unconvincing titles I've ever watched.
I do like the music in and of itself, but somewhere between the arrangement of the themes and the audio mix the use is pretty awful. What should be haunting, impactful themes to complement the proceedings are bereft of nuance and tact, presenting as so terribly forthright and downright kitschy that they serve to rip us from the viewing experience. Yamamoto may as well have put together a soundtrack of nu-metal. Glaring, bare-faced production values stop only a little shy of being painful on the eyes where the fundamental image is concerned, and all the best efforts to exercise lighting, shadow, and production design do nothing to temper that gawkiness. Much the same goes for the audio in general, and the editing and cinematography. Is there anything here that is done well?
It takes half the diminutive runtime for anything of note to happen, but because Yamamoto fails as both writer and director to cobble together a cogent narrative, there isn't one scene, moment, or thought that carries the slightest shred of power. 'Violator' is in fact nothing more than scattered, insipid, senseless, pointless slop, totally bereft of value; whatever it was that the filmmaker thought he was doing across these seventy-three minutes, he utterly failed to do it. I know The Asylum is often named as an exemplar of poor film-making, but Yamamoto makes the average Asylum production look like prestige drama. Even without further taking into account cartoonish sound effects, halfhearted visual effects, and abject puerility, this is surely one of the worst things I've ever watched, and I can only wish I were exaggerating. Whatever it is you think you're going to get out of this, you're terribly mistaken, and I urgently advise you to direct your attention literally anywhere else. You'll be very sorry if you don't.
