Spiral
(2000)
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Spiral
(2000)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Eriko Hatsune | ... |
Kirie Goshima
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Fhi Fan | ... |
Shuichi Saito
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Hinako Saeki | ... |
Kyoko Sekino
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Eun-Kyung Shin | ... |
Chie Marayama
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Keiko Takahashi | ... |
Yukie Saito
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Ren Ohsugi | ... |
Toshio Saito
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Denden | ... |
Officer Futada
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Masami Horiuchi | ... |
Reporter Ichiro Tamura
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Tarô Suwa | ... |
Yasuo Goshima
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Tooru Teduka | ... |
Yokota Ikuo
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Sadao Abe | ... |
Mitsuru Yamaguchi
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Asumi Miwa | ... |
Shiho Ishikawa
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Saori Nakane | ... |
Little Kirie
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Yasuki Tanaka | ... |
Little Shuichi
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Yuki Murakami | ... |
Yukky
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In a small town in Japan, Kirie comes upon her boyfriend's father silently videotaping a snail. He seems unaware of her presence and she thinks no more of it. Later, the mans obsession with spirals becomes more and more bizarre, ending in his suicide in a washing machine which turn his body into a spiral. Soon other inhabitants become possesed with different forms of spirals, one student seems to be mutating into a snail, another's hair becomes strangely medusa-like. The entire town becomes possesed. Written by Fred Cabral <ftcabral@hotmail.com>
Hypnotists can use a rotating spiral to send their subjects into a trance; director Higuchinsky risks achieving the same result with his dreamlike horror movie Uzumaki, which makes very little sense and crawls along at a snail's pace.
Fortunately, just like the many spirals that proliferate the film, Uzumaki is extremely twisted stuff and, with its impressive visuals and creepy atmosphere, should prove intriguing enough for fans of bizarre Japanese cinema to resist falling asleep.
Eriko Hatsune plays pretty schoolgirl Kirie Goshima, who comes to realise that her home town has fallen under the influence of spirals (that's right, you read correctly.... spirals). Members of her community are becoming obsessed with the shape, which results in some downright strange behaviour and even physical transformation: there is a spate of suicides, a man loses control of his eyeballs, a girl grows medusa-like gravity defying hair, and people even turn into snails!
The film is split into four chaptersPremonition, Erosion, Visitation, and Transmigration (although these titles do nothing to help explain what the hell is going on)and each is weirder than its predecessor; by the end of the final chapter, almost nothing has been resolved, but viewers will at least have been treated to some very memorable scenes of Asian weirdness, a couple of unexpected, gory deaths, and some subtle subliminal whorls hidden amongst the action to keep sharper-eyed viewers happy.
5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.