Masters of Horror: Episode 13 Imprint

This isn't an easy episode to review. Somewhat infamously, Imprint was not aired on Showtime, but instead went straight-to-DVD. Officially the content was considered too shocking, but there is some speculation that it was pulled as a marketing ploy. Certainly I can see the appeal of being able to label the DVD as “too shocking for Showtime!”

This is still a shocking episode, either way. But, some of my concerns with it are not simply the shock itself. I think every critic is at some point confronted with a movie that he or she finds objectionable on some deeper moral level. I remember Roger Ebert's review of Wolf Creek as a great example of that. He saw the movie as well-made, but thoroughly unpleasant to sit through. He said that “there is a line, and this movie crosses it. I don't know where the line is, but it's well North of Wolf Creek.”

In this case my issues are more straight forward: This is an episode that clearly tries to portray the horrors of human trafficking, while simultaneously using sexy Asian women as the victims. The use of shibari and erotic needlework as a form of torture further eroticizes the episode. I'm usually reluctant to say that a work of fiction glorifies sexual violence, but if there's ever been a work which I found difficult to defend from such criticisms, it's this episode.

Both seasons of Masters of Horror included an episode by a Japanese horror director. In this case it's Takashi Miike, director of Audition. With that film I had a great deal of trouble analyzing the story because I lacked the cultural context to tell whether the main character was supposed to be likable, or a sexist pig who got his comeuppance. Here, however, it's clear that Miike is telling a story intended for an American audience.

The episode takes place in the 19^th century, and deals with an American journalist named Christopher (Billy Drago) who comes to a brothel located on a small island. He is looking for his lost love, Komomo (an actress credited as the single name Michié). He's told that's she's not on the island, but that he'll have to stay the night and catch the boat back in the morning. While he's uninterested in sex, he sees a woman with a deformed face (Youki Kudoh) being abused by the Madame, and asks to take her to his room for the night simply to help her.

The woman, whose name is never given, tells Christopher that Komomo was on the island, but hanged herself when she believed her love wasn't coming. The woman also tells Christopher the story of her own childhood, and how she ended up trafficked by her mother, a mid-wife, after her father died.

Christopher suspects the woman is lying, and gradually goads more and more information out of her. With each retelling Komomo's fate becomes more and more horrific. In the second telling Komomo killed herself after having been tortured when she was accused of stealing the Madame's jade ring. The final retelling reveals that the woman had stolen the ring herself, framed Komomo, and then hanged her to make it look like suicide.

The plot then takes an even more bizarre twist, as the woman reveals that she has a parasitic twin concealed on her head (the effect has to be seen to be believed) who wanted the ring. The woman's mother was not a midwife, but an abortionist, who married her abusive brother. The woman was molested by a Buddhist priest, who instilled an intense fear of Hell in her. She believed herself to be evil, and by extension believed that anyone who was friends with her would go to hell with her, but by betraying Komomo and severing their friendship, she could assure Komomo's ascent into heaven.

Putting my objections to the episode aside, it's definitely disturbing. We get to watch as the onion is peeled back, showing us more and more just how deep the tragedy goes. The ending, however, still leaves us with many troubling questions.

Christopher is something of a decoy. We expect the white male to be our protagonist. While the episode does eventually end on him in prison, having killed the woman, this isn't really his story. We get only hints of his backstory. He's there only to be our surrogate, to give the woman someone to tell her life story to.

In a simple yeah or nay, I give this episode another yeah. It's certainly thrilling, and could easily be expanded into a full-length movie. Yes, I have some objections to it, but the bottom line is that it does it's job.