Uzumaki is the story of Kirie and Shuichi, kids in a small coastal Japanese town of Kurouzu who witness their town’s domination by uzumaki, or the spiral. First, it’s Shuichi’s father’s fascination with snail shells, swirling soup, and pottery. Then, students at the local school start growing spirals on their backs. Things come to a head when Shuchi’s pops offs himself by cramming his body into a washing machine so he can realize the “ultimate expression of uzumaki.” At the funeral, Shuichi’s mom goes bugeye crazy when the smoke at the crematorium takes the form of a spiral and descends into a nearby pond. Kirie’s dad starts making strange spiral pottery out of mud from this pond, and things get weirder from there until, well, you’ll have to see.Uzumaki is stylish and creepy, but it’s rarely really scary. It seems to be aimed squarely at teens who may be able to relate to Kirie and Shuichi’s sense of alienation and who may be more likely to be fascinated with strange deaths. I don’t want to make too much of this comparison, but it’s the same fascination that allows there to be five Saw movies or encourages people to make a Final Destination 4. But where Saw is simply sadistic and Final Destination is, well, big, loud and dumb, Uzumaki is stylish and makes the most of it’s obviously small budget with effective editing and camera tricks. Some of this flash can be a bit annoying, but for the most part it adds a psychedelic noir sensibility to a story that might have otherwise come off as a bit too silly for the big screen. Examples of this include the use of color filters (that mimic the color plates of the manga) during key scenes and the occasional shot of the actors’ ghost-like reflections to emphasize the otherworldliness of the proceedings as well as the self-referential nature of the spiral-induced sickness. (An obsession with the spiral seems to culminate in a desire to incorporate the perfection of the spiral into one’s own body. Thus Shuichi’s dad stuffs himself into a washing machine, but carefully places a mirror so he can see himself die.)
As interesting as the film Uzumaki is, the manga Uzumaki by Junji Ito that it’s based on is a lot more satisfying. Where Uzumaki the movie is moody and surreal, Uzumaki the manga is gorgeously illustrated and, well, sick. In the manga, the residents of Kurouzu are subjected to all kinds of nauseating spiral-y deaths, and we’re treated to strikingly realistic illustrations. The storytelling is also much tighter, especially in the episodic second volume where the townspeople turn to snails and munch on magical placenta, and where babies, with the help of mosquitoes (the spiral connection), hatch an evil plan to be reinserted into their mother’s wombs. I assure you, it’s all a lot more gruesome than it sounds.
Another point of comparison is the ending. After the first volume creates the world and the second volume let’s us live in it for a bit, the third volume of the manga draws everything to a savage but appropriate conclusion. The movie ends abruptly before we really get a sense of what’s going on, and by comparison seems kind of slight. That being said, Uzumaki is certainly a worthwhile and interesting horror film and is a fitting way to round out Giant Electric Penguin’s 31 Days of Horror. Now go eat some candy.
