Visitor Q opens with a man videotaping a teenage girl while she basically taunts him as he protests that what they are about to do is so wrong. A midde-age man having sex with a teenage girl, yeah, that's wrong. However, we understand his apprehension later, that is, after having sex. She is the man's daughter. He doesn't forget to pay her, though.

That's about as conventional as Visitor Q gets. Where Ichi the Killer was over the top in violence and gore, Visitor Q is over the top in it's depiction of exaggerated and perverse family dysfunction. Where to start? We've already started with the beginning, so let's move on from there.

So, the Father, a television correspondent with bad ideas for stories, pays his daughter to have sex with him. Just had to say that again. As his family falls apart (more on that later) he is obsessed with finding the next great idea for him to exploit. One example is when he comes across his son being bullied quite awfully by his schoolmates. Instead of intervening, he pulls out his ever-present cam-corder and begins taping the episode, narrating as he does so. "This is my son. This is my son being bullied. I am his Father, how do I feel?" He probably said something quite different, but whatever. Point is, this guy is putting his work above his family, and his work has become a source of ridicule and shame.

His Wife gets beaten. Not by her husband, but by her young (I don't know, 12 - 14?) son. She cringes when she hears him coming, and if dinner isn't cool, or he's just in a bad mood, she gets beaten with a stick or one of the many implements that her son keeps in his closet. She also is addicted to heroin, so naturally she turns the odd trick to pay for her means of escaping reality.

The Son, as might already be apparent, has a chip on his shoulder, which has probably been placed there by the bullies, and the lack of support that he gets at home.

The Daughter is, as you may have guessed, not super sexually moral, and leaves home for the glamorous field of prostitution.

So who is Visitor Q? One day, as the Father waits in a bus shelter, he is hit by a young man on the back of the head with a brick. Walking home, a little nervous (having been hit on the head with a brick for no apparent reason by someone he didn't even see) he gets hit on the head again. Next thing we know this young man enters the family home with the father (his head bandaged) and makes himself completely at home. This is Visitor Q.

Visitor Q doesn't get involved with the beatings by the son on his mother, nor does he seem to pass judgement on any member of the family. He just shares their meals and watches with a passive, amused kind of interest. Where do thing go from here? Oh my goodness. I'd love to tell you, but that would take out a lot of the fun. Trust me. It gets very weird.

What lifts Visitor Q way above exploitation is the performances. We feel for the mother, as in one scene when she takes off her clothes and the multiple scars from her beatings are evident. We understand why she then reaches for her fix of heroin, as we see the numbed pain in her face. While the situations are over the top, the acting by everyone involved is not. We really care for these people.

Will the wife ever stand up to her son? Will the daughter ever return home? Will the son ever find peace from the bullying? Will the father ever realize that he's not very cool, and that he has a family to attend to? And what of Visitor Q himself? Will he ever get involved? Is he a force of good or evil?

Although shot on video, the look of the movie never feels wrong. I almost always hate the video look, but in skilled hands, with a compelling story and great performances, it is a non-issue.

There is no gore on camera to speak of, the nudity is not erotic at all, and there are no zombies. The shock value comes in the situations, the entertainment from the dark humour and the bizarre and compelling story. I can't recommend this movie enough.

DO NOT BUY THIS FILM IF: You are offended by depictions of incest, mother beating, drug use, prostitution, bullying, rape, murder, necrophelia, supernatural breast lactation, dismemberment of dead bodies, or failed reporters getting accosted by their own micrphones. Pretty clear.

RECOMMENDATION: For all Takashi Miike fans, of course, and for those that can abide, even enjoy, the dark humor in such exaggerated dysfunction and extreme perversity. The film does redeem itself, for those not so shocked out of their heads to appreciate it.