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.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #11 Audition

Audition is a movie I feel almost unqualified to talk about. The film, while Japanese, is mostly easy to follow for a Western viewer. However, the real problem is how to interpret the main character, the widower Aoyama Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi). As a Western viewer, I see him as unquestionably sleazy. He goes along with a completely immoral scheme concocted by his friend and co-worker, Yasuhisa (Jun Kunimura), to use a casting call for a movie to find potential brides, so that Aoyama can “comfort” one of the women who’s rejected.

I suspect, but can’t confirm, that having Yasuhisa come up with this plan was an attempt to keep our sympathies with Aoyama. However, I’m uncertain of the extent. At best, I see Aoyama as a weak-willed Yes Man. And at worst, as a sleazy opportunist, eager to pass the buck to someone else in his own mind. During the first act, he periodically reminds us of how uncomfortable he is with the idea, even as he makes no effort to end the plan. Who’s to blame here may seem unimportant, but it leaves me uncertain whether this film is supposed to be about sin and punishment, or a man having horrible things happen to him through no fault of his own.

Just their luck, the woman Aoyama selects happens to be a serial killer named Yamazaki Asami (Eihi Shiina). The reveal for this is slow, as she’s initially treated as a perfect romantic partner, even after Yasuhisa is unable to confirm any of her references. For this period, it appears that she’s going to open up to Aoyama about a dark and troubled past that he’ll help her to overcome.

Don’t get me wrong, Asami’s dark and troubled past is there. She was physically and sexually abused by her amputee stepfather. She’s a damaged person, incapable of forming normal attachments. We’re shown her apartment, which has no furniture, just a phone, and a man being held prisoner in a bag. This is literally the first shot of the movie to hint at the horror genre, and it comes an hour into the film. Asami sits next to her phone, unmoving, waiting for Aoyama to call.

From this point on the film still holds back the horror for the final act, but ceases pretenses regarding what it is. The music becomes more foreboding, the lighting becomes subtly dimmer, and Aoyama discovers that one of Asami’s former employers was murdered, and another is currently missing.

Asami’s wrath being brought to bear against Aoyama is inevitable. The thing that sets her off is a miscommunication which I’m, once again, somewhat limited in my ability to interpret. Asami asks Aoyama to confirm that he loves “only” her, and he affirms this. However, she later discovers that he is a widower and has a teenage son (Tetsu Sawaki). My ability to interpret sympathy is not limited in this case strictly by cultural barriers, but by simple language barriers. As I do not speak Japanese, I have no idea if the “love” she was asking him about would have been strictly romantic, and if it would have included a deceased partner. Without this context, I’m uncertain if he lied, or if she overreacted.

In contrast to the earlier scenes, I think that on this point Western sympathies are with Aoyama who merely left out extraneous qualifiers while declaring his love to the woman of his dreams. On the other hand, in Western society, a woman demanding that a man declare his love for “only me” would be seen as a gigantic red flag that the woman was emotionally unstable, and likely to be extremely jealous.

While it’s only in the last act of the film that Asami becomes a direct physical threat, she easily makes this the most memorable part. The comparison to Misery is obvious, particularly when Asami removes Aoyama’s feet with razor wire to keep him immobile. However, I found Asami to be far more frightening that Annie Wilkes. This is likely a case in which the film’s cultural divide works to its advantage. Asami, unlike Annie, never yells or screams. She giggles while torturing Aoyama, retaining her poise and grace in a way that seems unnerving to American viewers.

The final act of the movie does an excellent job of playing with the viewer’s perception of reality. We’re treated to Aoyama having fantasies, or perhaps visions, that we can tell are in his head, mixed with other increasingly ambiguous imagery. However, even the most obvious hallucinations raise further questions.

A good example of this is Asami’s bagman. He seems to simply appear to Aoyama, and then disappear at one point. However, Aoyama never encountered him outside of his delusions. So how would Aoyama’s unconscious mind be aware of him, unless the entire concept of Asami holding a man hostage in a bag was all part of some elaborate fantasy? Hell, earlier in the film, before the hallucinations were implied to have begun, Aoyama interacts with Asami’s stepfather who she murders in flashback.

Probably the most clever trick the director pulls is to show Aoyama hallucinating himself next to Asami in bed, trying to escape from the pain... or perhaps just waking up from a guilt-ridden nightmare, only to drift back to sleep and finish out the dream. While simply having the movie be a dream would have been a cheap cop-out, leaving us there staring and wondering certainly gives an added edge to everything.

The mindscrew continues right up until the very end of the film where Asami is knocked down the stairs by Aoyama’s son and paralyzed. She begins to speak to Aoyama, repeating her words from their second date... or she’s dead and Aoyama is hallucinating... or this is all a bad dream.

You can probably already tell that I could easily write a book going through this movie scene-by-scene to determine exactly what it means. However, the biggest question is simply whether or not it’s scary. And the answer is yes, absolutely, unquestionably, this movie will scare you. See it if and only if that’s what you’re looking for.