Miki Shunichiro’s The Warped Forest is a strange, somewhat wonderful beast, rich in ideas and gently transgressive concepts. That it might only be partially successful is, in this case, excusable: while there is not a particularly strong story or well-defined characters, its off-kilter and sexualised weirdness will be a real treat for those attracted to their weirder end of Japanese cinema.

You know who you are. There are those odd, underground films that emerge from Japan’s independent sector, that play midnight sessions at film festivals to small crowds of enthusiastic fans. Occasionally a filmmaker will build enough of a cult audience that they actually become something of a name in cinéaste circles: Miike Takashi, Tsukamoto Shinya, Matsumoto Hitoshi. Miki Shunichiro is nowhere as prolific or as well known as those filmmakers, but neither is his film like those filmmaker’s works. The Warped Forest is a much brighter, more comedic affair. Even if does not entirely pull together, it represents a very distinctive and bizarre excursion into an almost sketch-styled comedy.

A group of holidaymakers at a remote hot springs resort begin vanishing from reality for days at a time. In an alternative universe they experience life inside a tiny village surrounded by a magical forest. People vary wildly in size. Woman-shaped talking trees grow suspiciously gynic fruit. At a local brothel customers have their nipples extended by furry animals. A young woman goes hunting with an enormous sexual penis cannon.

Nothing about The Warped Forest makes much sense. While the film is a follow-up to Miki’s 2005 film The Funky Forest: First Contact (directed with Ishimine Hajime and Ishii Katsuhito), at least in thematic terms, it is clear that seeing that earlier work does little to clarify the later one. It is best I think to simply take the unusual characters and comically sexualised creatures as they come. This could technically be considered body horror, but it is a kind of horror that does not actually do more than unsettle and confuse. It also amuses more often than it does not.

David Cronenberg is a palpable influence on Miki’s work here, although while there is much common ground between their respective fleshy beasts and technologies there is a wide gulf in terms of quality and effect. While both directors have used the biological to satirize, Miki’s is a far more puerile approach. This is a film that sniggers about sex and masculinity: nowhere more than in its depiction of an enormous mechanical gun that takes 30 seconds to slowly power up, reach a growling crescendo, and then dribble a thin stream of fluid from a flaccid penis at the end.

This was a legendarily difficult film to see on its initial release, which comprised just a handful of international festivals. It never received a domestic Japanese release, and it is only in recent years that it finally received a subtitled blu-ray release via Third Window Films. While imperfect, it packs in enough surreality, sexual weirdness, and comedy to be a winning gem for a particular kind of Japanese film enthusiast. We are all better off for finally having it available.