Uzumaki Director: Higuchinsky Number of Items: 1 Format: Color, Closed-captioned Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 90 minutes Studio: ELITE ENTERTAINMENT Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2004-07-06 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 "Lovecraft. Lynch. Cronenberg. Miike. Twlight Zone" Residents of a small town develop a fatal obsession with spirals. Teenager Kirie is the first to notice some of her neighbor's quirky behavior and even smiles as one man explains his attraction to spirals to her father. Then the deaths start (washing machine, spiral staircase) and the mutations (giant snail/humans, a girl with medusa like curls) and Kirie realizes that she's not in Kansas anymore. Instead of high-tailing it out of town Kirie and one of her friends try to get to the bottom of the mystery, but that ends up a very, very bad mistake since this movie wasn't made in Hollywood and there's no guarantee that the good guys will win or even end the movie with any of their bones intact. What a refreshing idea! Visually one of the most impressive and original movies I've seen in years. Dark, creepy, beautiful, apocalyptic it's almost like a 90-minute Tool video. And speaking of music, UZUMAKI has a great soundtrack that really adds to the whole experience. If you can watch it at a high volume. "I felt like I was seeing 'uzumakis' after this film .." A Japanese horror film that I would consider a definite lightweight and a disappointment. In a small remote, of course, Japanese village strange and horrible events seem to take over the town after the father of one of the main characters goes off the literal deep end with spirals and all its variations and combinations .... I guess I didn't like the film since, hey I don't think spirals or snails are very frightening. Also, the movie seems disjointed and the gory scenes seem practically gratuitous. When one of the young students jumps to his death from like the 4th floor right down the middle of a spiral staircase... I thought ... oh how cute .... So why all the hype abiut this horror flick ... well I would venture to guess it's the fact that the film is chock a block full of Japanese middle and high school girls .. all parading around in their pretty little white school uniforms .... That would be the only reason that I gave this film 2 stars instead of the one it justly deserbes .... "I'm not sure what to think..." Having recently become obsessed with Japanese horror, I picked this movie at random. If you could give 1/2 star ratings this one would be a 3 1/2. It was interesting, but it was just weird. Often times it was actually unintentionally funny just because Japanese culture can seem strange to Americans. Like the characters reaction to cantalope...in America it's just a cantalope. In Japan apparently cantalope is the bizz-omb because they got just a little too excited about it. It made us laugh. The plot was a little hard to follow because it was mainly metaphorical. There are Japanese teenagers in love who have eccentric parents who are disturbingly obsessed with spirals (or usumaki). At some point this girl goes to school where a creepy girl fixes her hair in spirals and a slimy boy starts turning into a giant snail and it spreads to his teacher and another kid. Don't even try to make literal sense of it. It practically drips with symbolism. I saw it as a reflection upon how society, the media, and peer pressure suck us in. And if you try and fight it, you will drive yourself crazy or become weary and allow yourself to be sucked in. I'm curious to read the Manga upon which the film is based and see if I could gain any insight to the story. It was a beautifully filmed movie. The lighting and camera angles make it a moving work of art. It really isn't all that gory either. That could be a plus or minus depending on what you want. If you are looking for a movie like Ju-On or Ringu, look elsewhere. Usumaki is not the same kind of movie.It isn't a bad movie, it just has the disjointed quality of a dream. It isn't really scary or gory, more like creepy and icky. It takes a minute for it to sink in after you are through watching. Pay attention to the movie, you may miss something crucial to the plot if you don't. It definately isn't a mindless gorefest. "Huh" I'll keep this one short. This movie is... strange. The plot is simple: A Japanese town is falling under a bizarre curse of destruction and murder which involves the obsession with and proliferatin of 'Uzumaki' (spirals, apparently) That doesn't explain much in specific, but saying anything specific would likely just confuse you more. It's interesting thoug, and entertaining. It's commonly called a horror-comedy, and this is kinda right and kinda wrong. This film uses horror film conventions, has some graphic violence, and is somewhat creepy at times. Still, it's far from truly serious as a whole, but it doesn't exacly seem like it's trying to be funny much of the time, just kinda weird. Comparisons to Evil Dead II and some of Tim Burton's films are pretty appropriate, though this movie is darker then that stuff generally is. Thus, 'Uzumaki' is more of an exercise in filmmaking than it is of storytelling, but I like this method plenty. It's certainly an energetic film, with lots of crazy, off the wall camerawork, a la Raimi, with extreme closeups and the occasional spinning of the camera to simulate the spiral, along with surreal, exaggerated set-design reminiscent of Burton with a distinct green tint topping it all off. Lots of the imagery is striking, such as the crazy father sitting in the midst of his spiral collection, the giant spiral staircase from a which a student plummets, and the montage of the spiral-addled town, at the end. Sadly, the gore itself isn't anything to exciting, but it works well enough, I suppose, and some of it is kinda original.As others have said, the film does just kinda end, which is too bad in a way, but still kinda good cause it keeps the air of mystery and absurdity nicely. Well, that's it. If you like surreal, visual films and horror movies you'll probably wanna check this out. If not, I doubt you will. "Chopped Off with a Knife" I could not believe the ending to this DVD. The first 110 minutes were a fairly faithful adaptation of the first volume of the three volume Uzumaki manga series. The film explores the characters and begins the builup of creepiness. Then, the pace quickens. The slime-geeks are given short shrift. The effect of the mud on the heroine's father is unexplained. Then, the film just ends. There is no resolution of anything raised theretofore in the film. The part where her boyfriend yells "It's got me" is not in the manga. And then his face turns demonic as in some cheapo horror flick. And that's just it. A bunch of pictures of (I guess) the "effects" of the spiral on the townsfolk are paraded across the screen and nothing else. This totally ruined the film. It seems as if they intended to do a multi-part film with sequeals covering all three volumes of the manga because they covered most of the first one, but then ran out of money and just slapped the ending on as best they could.