Uzumaki (2000)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Higuchinsky

Writers:

Junji Ito (manga)
Kengo Kaji (supervising screenwriter)

Release Date:

11 February 2000 (Japan)

Genre:

Horror

Plot:

In a small town in Japan, Kirie comes upon her boyfriend's father silently videotaping a snail. He seems...

Plot Keywords:

Spiral | Snail | Suicide | Small Town | Obsession

Cast

Eriko Hatsune	...	Kirie Goshima
Fhi Fan	...	Shuichi Saito
Hinako Saeki	...	Kyoko Sekino
Eun-Kyung Shin	...	Chie Marayama
Keiko Takahashi	...	Yukie Saito
Ren Osugi	...	Toshio Saito
Denden	...	Officer Futada
Masami Horiuchi	...	Reporter Ichiro Tamura
Taro Suwa	...	Yasuo Goshima
Tooru Teduka	...	Yokota Ikuo
Sadao Abe	...	Mitsuru Yamaguchi
Asumi Miwa	...	Shiho Ishikawa
Saori Nakane	...	Little Kirie
Yasuki Tanaka	...	Little Shuichi
Yuki Murakami	...	Yukky

Also Known As:

Spiral (USA)
Vortex (Hong Kong: English title) (subtitle)

Runtime:

USA:90 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo | DTS-Stereo

Certification:

UK:15 | UK:18 (DVD release) | South Korea:15 (video rating) | South Korea:18 | Germany:16 | Singapore:PG

Company:

Omega Micott Inc.

Trivia:

Some areas of the screen are digitally twisted into a spiral pattern at least five times in the movie (not necessarily in this order): the first time you see the sunset sky, on the top right a bird's eye view of Kirie and Shuichi returning home from school, on the ground to their right to Kirie's left in the bushes when she's walking over to Shuichi's house with a gift a ceiling panel to the right of the stairs in Kirie's house as she walks down at night the end of the hospital hall, dead center.

Soundtrack:

Raven

Refreshingly weird & creepy

Hey now, I have never laid eyes on a Manga comic, but apparently this movie is based on one. Ah well, such is life. Anyway, this is a pretty bizarre, to say the least, movie, as things literally spiral out of control in a small Japanese town. People are becoming obsessed with the uzumaki (spiral) and this young girl watches her friend's father videotape a snail, and later in the movie, people start becoming snails? It also seems this boy's dad becomes so obsessed he somehow commits suicide in a household appliance. There is some bizarre humor here that might be at home in a Tim Burton movie, but there is some nastiness & gore like only the Japanese can do with justice. As with a lot of Japanese films though, the ending is the ending, and did anything get resolved? Well, not to my mind, it didn't. There are some hints as to why this is all happening but they aren't explored and there's a lot left to either the imagination or else it wasn't deemed important. Still though, there are lots of things for the eye to feast on and if you aren't obsessed with everything making perfect sense, this is well worth seeing, because it's just so original and bizarre. My favorite was the father with the spinning eyeballs, personally. 8 out of 10 stars.