2 out of 5

Director: Takashi Miike

Miike has a lot of offbeat / strange elements in many of his films –  sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t.  “Imprint” doesn’t work for me – though it’s one of Miike’s more cinematically beautiful pieces, it gets distracted by a middle portion that seems tailored to show a “mastering” of horror and then, when the weirdness full-on hits for its last chapter, the message and presentation get jumbled in the same way that Takashi’s “Katakuris” did – it becomes increasingly harder to tell what we’re supposed to get from the short, emotionally, story-wise, and loses further cohesion thanks to the first-time-in-English style.  Though “Imprint” includes some of the family themes that are common in Miike flicks (and has the last-minute “maybe all it was a joke” quality that he often sneaks in), this feels much more like a work-for-hire than other films from this era of his career.  The English speaking was also a necessity instead of an artistic choice (as in Western Django), meaning our American actor is corralled improperly – Drago gets the pitch and posturing down but his over-acting in some scenes is just pitifully out of place for the somewhat graceful setup – and some important moments can’t be carried as effectively by the actresses that aren’t used to the language (Kudoh is excellent, though).  As to the violence – we know Miike isn’t a stranger to that, but it feels different here.  I’ve seen many a violent film in my time, but ‘Imprint’ still is on the list of things where… I’ll probably watch something else, because the torture scene is just brutal.  He attempts to artify it a bit by (this is from the commentary) perhaps making it a tribute to the Japanese “pinky violence” films, but it is nonetheless hard to watch and – Miike pretty much states as such – seems included only to be horrific, and not strictly for something dealing with the story.  Looks amazing – some wonderfully framed shots – starts intriguingly, but becomes almost completely unwound during its runtime.