Lumberjack the Monster

After surviving an attack by a masked serial killer, ruthless lawyer Akira Ninomiya sets out on a path of revenge.

Lumberjack the Monster is a Takashi Miike film.

If you like movies at all, then that alone is probably more than enough to tell you whether or not you’re interested in seeing this. But at the same time… you should be aware that this is definitely one of his more sedate films.

Takashi Miike was born in Osaka, Japan, and according to legend, went to film school in Yokohama specifically because there were no entrance exams. By his own account, he was an undisciplined and lackadaisical student, and rarely attended his classes. This probably means he often let down a lot of his fellow students who were working on their own projects and were depending on their fellow students for help, which probably explains why—again, according to legend—when a local TV company came looking for unpaid production assistants, his school nominated Miike, and only Miike, making him no longer their problem. But he excelled there, and ended up working in TV for almost a decade, in a variety of roles. Eventually he was able to parlay this experience into making his own films, turning out cheap but exciting action and horror movies.

Out this flurry of creativity, he made Audition, a somewhat disturbing thriller about the perils of the dating world. The film world took notice. Since then, he’s been… well, very prolific. In the years since, Takashi Miike has directed a hundred, maybe more, different feature films, most of which, continually reaffirm his well-deserved reputation for explicit and taboo representations of violence and sex.

From crime stories, like Ichi the Killer, the story of sadistic yakuza enforcer and psychotic killer finding each other, or First Love, about of one night in Tokyo, as young boxer and a sex worker get caught up in a war between cops and the Yakuza, or surreal comedies like The Happiness of the Katakuris, the tale a quaint inn, run by a nice family of oddballs, where all the guests seem to die, so in an effort to fend off bad publicity, they just bury the dead on the property, or fun action flicks like Sukiyaki Western Django, a stylized anime-cowboy version of Yojimbo and Fistful of Dollars, where a Man With No Name blows into a town caught in a war between rival gangs, or sci-fi/fantasy flicks, like the live-action version of the classic anime, Blade of the Immortal, the story of a samurai, cursed with immortality, who swears to help a young woman avenge her parents, leading to many, many battles against hordes of warriors and the strange master swordsmen in charge of them, or finally, there’s my personal favorite, 13 Assassins, a remake of a 1963 film, which is based on actual historical events, it is the story of 13 samurai in 19th-century Japan who are secretly tasked with eliminating a greedy, cruel, and evil young Lord, which ends in an epic showdown between our heroes and a huge amount of bad guys. Huge. There’s so many dead bodies by the end, you guys.

There’s literally something for everyone in his oeuvre.

And at 64 years old, he’s still going, seemingly powered by nothing else than a pure love of cinema. In fact, right now, as you’re reading this, there’s a good chance he’s on a set somewhere, excitedly spraying fake blood everywhere… and also, probably making a better film than Lumberjack the Monster…

But the thing is, even if it’s the silliest, or the most basic, or even the “not that great“ kind of material, Miike has a fantastic eye and a wild touch, so even though “Lumberjack the Monster” isn’t that good, is a bit slow, and more than a bit clunky, it’s still pretty not bad. Not great, unfortunately, but not bad either. Yes, it doesn’t really hold together as far as narrative or theme goes, but still, there’s enough of Miike here that it’s a fun watch.

Lumberjack the Monster is the story about an asshole businessman named Akira, who also happens to be a serial killer. One night, he comes very close to becoming the latest victim of another killer known as Lumberjack, when he is attacked by a mysterious axe-wielding monster-man who looks like a cross between a scarecrow and burn victim.

The look is apparently what the main character from a children’s book named Lumberjack looks like, which heavily implies that it’d be an incredibly fucked-up thing to read to children. It probably wouldn’t be on the same level as Tailypo, of course, which the librarian at Page Elementary in Boone, Iowa read to the classes of kindergarteners every year, forever scarring generations of small town kids.

But I digress…

While getting examined in the aftermath of the assault, the doctor discovers a neurochip in Akira’s brain. Through some various bits of rigamaroll, the detectives on the case discover that all of Lumberjack’s victims have a similar chip, and that all of these people can be traced back to an abandoned orphanage with a very dark past. It turns out, the chip has something to do with Akira’s murderous behavior, and figuring out how his life was possibly shaped by this chip is the only way he can figure out who it is that is trying to kill him.

In a nutshell, it’s a deadly game of cat-and-mouse between a serial killer, who might actually be feeling some guilt over his murderous actions for the first time in his life, and a seemingly supernatural being looking to deliver a little karmic justice at the end of an axe.

That’s basically the meat of the story…

And basically, the entire problem with the film is that it feels too restrained, like something is holding Miike back from indulging in his more intense, shocking, or just plain gory tendencies. There’s a few bits and pieces of him that find a way to shine through, but not enough. I don’t know if this was a work-for-hire gig, but it sure felt like a work-for-hire gig.

So, while I said that the film is overall not bad, if this is going to be your first Miike film, then I’d advise you to try something else.