Product Description: From the land that brought us RINGU (The Ring) comes UZUMAKI (Spiral). The inhabitants of a small Japanese seaside town come under the influence of a strange force that causes an obsession with spiral forms. One by one, the townspeople fall under its spell. The horror manifesting itself in different ways, its geometric pattern giving snails, food, and even the swirl of fingerprints an eerie quality that drives the inhabitants of Kurozou gradually insane. Kirie, a young schoolgirl, is the first to notice the strange behavior in friends and neighbors and is powerless to prevent the obsession that is overwhelming everyone around her. In one or two cases the victims fall prey to the spiral through their own weaknesses a student who is always late to school starts exhibiting signs of unnatural snail-like growths on his body, while another exhibitionist student finds herself the centre of a spiral of attention. Eventually the townspeople begin descending on a self-inflicted and self-perpetuating spiral of terror.
Japanese Horror? Maybe. When I purchased this movie, I thought that it was going to be a great Japanese horror movie. It turned out to be just weird and a little creepy, not really scary and gory like I was hoping, but its definitely something I have never seen before.
Like Taking the Book and Flipping Through the Pages and Tearing Some Out Here & There Most of this movie was, if not true to the manga, at least close enough to satisfy considering the crossover from book to movie. However, they cut out some important parts, parts that completely defined certain characters.
***Spoilers for book/movie***
One such example is Mitsuru, a guy who is constantly jumping out and surprising the main character. The chapter he appears in in the book is called Jack in the Box, and appropriately enough, he becomes one when he is killed by a car and the spring in it entangles itself in his body. He then jumps after Kirie, stalking her even in death. In the movie, he jumps out at her, dies in the right way and... that is it. No jack-in-the-box, not even the spring, no uzumaki (spiral) related death/horror what-so-ever.
Another is the very image on the cover- the girl and her spiraling hair. This doesn't happen to her. There is the tiniest hint of her hair getting a little curly, but that is it, it doesn't start floating and garnering attention. However, her classmate gets the hair. In the book, the classmate gets jealous and wishes for her hair to get like that, and it eventually consumes her as the hair sucks her life out to grow. The hair-growing showdown is one of the biggest scenes in the first book and it's hardly mentioned in the movie.
The movie is creepy though, and if you haven't read any of the books, you should like it though you will certainly get confused in bits as they are skimmed through. This was one of my main problems- during the last few minutes of the movie, they show various uzumaki-related corpses, very very briefly, almost as a tease of what you didn't get to see. Great way to force people to read the mangas, lousy (and mean) way to end a movie.
Please enter a title for your review American films lately seem almost universally focussed on either elbaorate plot twists or the many faces of human suffering and redemption. If you want to see something that that defies those conventions, along with often substituting fantasy for realism (though there is still some typical teen-oriented human drama in there) you will enjoy this film.
no stars and why is it classed as a horror movie? I don't get all the rave reviews here.After watching for an hour and a half all i saw was guy with brains open after falling through a stairwell.So no horror at all.It is not even sinister-just a few people vaguely concerned about something vaguely concerning spirals eg;The obessive man who collects spiral objects-his wife throws them out the house and he's not even that upset!!i have patience for the subtle but nothing going on here and i'm somewhat irritated this got classed in the horror section.I missed last 1/2hr of the film as the disc froze-hell maybe it turned tables but i doubt it.Utter rubbish.
Strange And Bizarre Spirals! Having purchased this DVD four years ago, I recently viewed it again. Strangely, I liked it even more than the first time I watched it. Maybe it was the mood I was in? And mood is everything with this Japanese film: based on the manga by Junji Ito. The film centers on a small town where an evil, in the shape of a spiral, enters the town causing madness and eventually death. This is a very atmospheric film and may not appeal to all viewers.
What I found fascinating about the film was how the spirals are everywhere. I even began looking at spirals in my living room. Like I wrote earlier, I was in one of those moods. Anyway, the film is not a classic horror, per se, however, it is an interesting and entertaining film nonetheless.
The atmosphere of the film is what really drew me into the film initially. Especially as the viewer you begin to witness different spirals begining to form. Moreover, for a film on a low budget [as this one was] the director, Higuchinsky, did a very decent job. Also, I really liked the acting of the young girl Kirie (Eriko Hatsune) in the film, as you view her witnessing the bizarre creepiness enveloping her town and its residents. Recommended for certain audiences. Rent it first.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
