Ranks near the top of MoH episodes, for me. There were flaws, to be sure. But this is an ep that presents an original and unpredictable story, and is the one case of an actual "master" working at the peak of his abilities. There's no compromise in Miike's work here, and "Imprint" fits in very nicely with themes that he's interested in (I'll keep things "spoiler-free" for now). The first half is kind of slow, but that torture scene is as cringe-inducing as you've heard. It's realism is what I think scared away Showtime. They show "Ichii", which has far more graphic torture, and had no trouble with Udo Kier feeding his intestines into a film projector in another ep. But they were more cartoonish. It's a classic US censorship thing -- graphic violence done in a fun and silly way is OK. But make violence unpleasant to watch and people start having problems. Anyway, back to ep ... after that point, I really didn't know where Miike was going -- and I like that. The episode was extremely well-shot -- far above made-for-tv standards. Like a lot of Miike, I'm not sure I got everything at the end ... but that's part of the game that Miike likes to play with his audience. Problems? Well, as others noted, the acting is god-awful. Youki was very good -- everyone else, very bad. I wish Miike just did this in Japanese -- too many people seemed like they were speaking English strickly phoenetically (no understanding, just memorization). Drago didn't have this excuse. I'm not remembering specific past roles by him. Is he really this awful, or is maybe his performance more a reflection of Miike's inexperience in directing English-speaking actors? And the "monster" at the end was laughter inducing -- which didn't seem to fit the tone that Miike was trying to set.

Still, I highly recommend you all see it and see what you think. Don't go into it expecting the greatest most-horrfic thing ever. And don't go in expecting run-of-the-mill horror, like most in MoH. It does fit nicely into Miike's works like "Audition", "Gozu", "Box".