Masters of Horror: Takashi Miike’s Imprint — movie review
If you dig Takashi Miike, or the show Masters of Horror you probably heard something regarding his “Banned” episode, Imprint; an hour of horror so foul that Showtime refused to air it in the United States. And you also probably heard a few reasons for the denial: the numerous shots of dead fetuses, the torture sequence, Billy Drago’s acting skills, etc. Well, we’ve now seen it, and while it may not be a textbook Video Nasty, it certainly is something extreme.
In Takashi Miike’s Imprint, Drago plays Christopher, an American on an endless search across Japan for his lost love, a prostitute named Komomo. The trail of clues leads him to a brothel where he encounters a deformed prostitute (Youki Kudoh) who informs him that the one he seeks is of the recently deceased. She proceeds to relate the story of both Kimomo’s demise and that of her own circumstance; a tale that incorporates excruciating tortures, shocking violence, incest, aborted fetuses, lecherous religious officials, and just about every other taboo known in the Western world.
What makes the film such uncomfortable watching is that the grotesqueries occur not in shadowy recesses but brightly lit locales. The needle/rope torture sequence is truly disgusting, and made even Kris and me, jaded viewers that we are, wince and turn away. Miike doesn’t show every torture in complete gory detail, but rather opts to give a cringe inducing teaser and let the audience imagine the rest. That said, in this sequence and a couple involving domestic violence (featuring the wife beater from Ichi the Killer) he does linger a bit too long for one to posit an earnestly artistic justification. Furthermore, the aforementioned sequence happens not to the main character but to Komomo, after only a few lines of dialogue. The audience has no time to really get to know her, and therefore the torture has no purpose other than to disgust.
But that’s not to say Imprint is purely a disturb-o-thon.This being a Miike film there are also some moments of shocking hilarity, particularly one sequence with a woman giving birth in a vertical position (The infant’s arrival is announced with a hollow thunk). Most other directors would shy away from such material, but Miike, being the gleeful iconoclastic imp that he is, boldly ventures forth. Furthermore, Imprint may be Miike’s most visually interesting film, as the set and costume design are vibrantly colored and finely detailed. The camera work is some of the best I’ve seen in his library of work and further signifies his progression as a filmmaker.
That said, the film is not without its problem areas. First and foremost, there’s the odd choice of having all the actors speak English. They’re actors are perfectly competent in their speech, and do an admirable job considering it is not their native language (I know I couldn’t hope to sound as good reciting lines in Japanese) but it leads to some truly strange sounding dialogue (“You make that pussy pay!” for instance.). Billy Drago’s acting is truly sub par, but in the context of the film it does manage to fit somehow. It’s so off the mark you can’t help but dig it (I’d like to see the guy in a western.). Youki Kudoh does do an admirable job with the material, and somehow manages to project beauty and confidence from under all the layers of makeup.
Imprint is far better than the vast majority of the Masters of Horror entries, but that in and of itself is not exactly praise. As a regular film it’s definitely lacking in the areas of story and true character development, but it is an apt, interesting, dark diversion into truly creepy crawly territories. Take that for what you will.
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