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 "Spiral into. Get sucked in" This is literelly one of the best horrors that has introduced itself onto the market, and the best japanesse horrors sense (organ). The other reviewers sceem to dislike the questionable ending. They obviouselly dont watch a lot of david lynch movies. It dosent give you all the answers right in from of you but to make your own conclusion draw what ever you think. The movie also does a number of things to mess with your mind, just turn the lights down low, pay close attention to things in the background and things that shouldnt be their i wont tell you specifics. The special effects are litterelly amazing. I cant even imagine how they did some of them. And the cinematography is breathtaking. I cant imagine anyone that liked ringu or even ring, organ, the eye, tomie, exc.. should love this even more. also any lynch or daVid cRoneNberG. Or just want to watch a great horror movie. "A bizarre horror film about spirals" In a small Japanese town, Kirie happens upon her boyfriend Shuichi's father mindlessly videotaping a snail. She thinks nothing of it until strange events start happening: uzumaki, or spirals, pop up all over town; people turn into gigantic snails; other townsfolk become obsessed with finding spirals. Shuichi realizes that something is terribly wrong and tries to get Kirie to leave before the mysterious spirals grab hold of them. This is a bizarre film filled with intersting images - many of which are particularly gorey - and impressive special effects. But, the movie seems to be just that: images joined together by special effects. The story never really is fleshed out, and certain plot points are dropped just as quickly as they appear. The acting comes across quite often as campy and over-the-top, though Fhi Fan does a fine job as Shuichi, the young man who knows something is wrong and feels almost powerless to stop it. "Uzumaki" is an interesting film to view, if just for the special effects. "a work of art with spirals all around - remember Lovecraft" First of all I must say that Uzumaki is not for everyone. It is for the people who liked to read "Omni" in their childhood or gaze at Dali's picture and think "how the hell did he come up with this idea". Why I call it a piece of art is because this is not a real movie in the true sense of the word movie. All the actors and actresses are quite symbolic figure just to carry the frames. The beauty is in the composition of each frame. If you get a chance please pause frequently and look at the composition of the frames. They are all like the pictures from the surrealist's era. A small town Kurouzu is cursed by spirals. Spiral geometrically can be both asymptotic and non-asymptotic. - The start can be the end or the end can be the start. The director Higuchinsky (real name Akihiro Higuchi deals with these loosely connected oddities with are vaguely and beyond explanation. Sometimes it is loving and sunny the next moment it is gruesome. The only thing close to this is Lovecraft's novels. This is not like Ringu or even anything close to it. This is not a horror movie just bizarre images, weird deaths and transformations, even a centipede> it is like Higuchinsky throws an idea at you and then retracts it quickly to through another one. Look closely into every frame and surrounding every character you will see the signs of spiral or uzumaki whose influence or visibility slowly increases over time. You will definitely enjoy this movie. "A Truely Bizarre movie" I loved this movie. I found it interesting to watch as the people in a small town become more and more obsessed with spirals. This movie is not for everyone. If you must have all the answers tied up neatly by the end, this is not for you. This movie isn't full of alot of scares, per se, but there is a definite creepy feeling during most of it, and more than a few surprises. "Bizarre and frightening" U...ZU...MA...KI! Which, according to the sources, is Japanese for "spiral." Is it ever! I used to think Wisconsin was the weirdest place on the planet since any region that offers up Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer as sons of the soil certainly raises eyebrows. After watching this prime example of J-horror, I now know that the dairy state can't hold a candle to the warped imaginations residing in the Land of the Rising Sun. Now I don't think Junji Ito--the guy responsible for creating Uzumaki as a manga, or Japanese comic book--has ever engaged in the sort of behavior that made Gein and Dahmer famous, but after watching the film adaptation of his work I'm starting to wonder exactly what he eats. I wonder what he drinks, too. Maybe there is something in the water over in Asia? Whatever it is, they ought to pass it out for free in Hollywood's corridors of power. J-horror is starting to make serious inroads into the United States as fans abandon in droves the formulaic straight to video slasher retreads in favor of the hyperimaginative, over the top gory Japanese shockers. The only criticism I have regarding these films, "Uzumaki" included," is that Japanese pop cultural references in the films don't transfer over to English speaking audiences. Something tells me I'm missing a lot of what's going on in "Uzumaki." Nevertheless, the film is still a massively entertaining, sometimes campy excursion into the deepest recesses of utter weirdness. The story centers on a young schoolgirl named Kirie Goshima (Eriko Hatsune) and her increasingly bizarre experiences in the small town of Kurozucho. Our young heroine, we soon learn, lives alone with her sculptor father while finishing up high school. Her mother passed away when Kirie was much younger, a difficult situation greatly eased by the presence of Shuichi Saito (Fhi Fan), a taciturn youth whose sole redeeming personality trait seems to be his fondness for Kirie. Saito is always distant and sort of odd, but he's even more so as the movie opens because he notices something is not right with his father Toshio (Ren Osugi). Dad quit his job in order to spend time collecting items shaped like a spiral, or items with spirals painted on them. He even eats food with a spiral design, and tends to get a tad cranky when his son and wife Yukie (Keiko Takahashi) ask to many questions. In one alarming scene, he even spins his eyeballs in a spiral pattern. Kirie learned about his odd habits after running into the man one day filming a snail, with special attention paid to its shell, in an alley. Apocalyptic weirdness rapidly ensues. By the time Toshio takes his life in a particularly spiral inducing way (watch and see how), the town is starting to descend into chaos. When the authorities cremate Toshio's remains, the ashes drift up into the sky and form a giant swirling spiral that horrifies everyone who witnesses the phenomenon. The pattern, in fact, begins appearing everywhere: in the clouds, on sidewalks, in the very camerawork through which we see the proceedings. Ultimately, human beings morph into giant snails, a girl at Kirie's school shows up sporting a spiral coif the size of Mount Everest, and various individuals physically assume a painful looking corkscrew shape. Yukie Saito, Shuichi's mother, goes insane after her husband's death. She spends her time in the hospital systematically removing anything remotely resembling a spiral from her body--including fingertips and her inner ears. What the heck is going on in Kurozucho? That is a question the film never attempts to address. We do catch a few snippets of information about an ancient religious cult uncovered by a reporter intrigued with the demise of Toshio and the subsequent shocking events in the town, but it isn't enough to explain how things turned so weird so fast. Nor is it enough to figure out why the problems started when they did. All we know is that Kirie and her boyfriend better get out of town fast if they wish to avoid the horrific effects of Uzumaki. I generally enjoyed the film even though I often didn't have a clue as to what was going on. The best element of the film is the beautiful Eriko Hatsune in the role of Kirie. She's a charming actress whose performance adds a stabilizing influence to the insanity unfolding all around her. Aside from Hatsune, too much happens that is just plain noggin' scratching bizarre. What's with the kid that keeps popping out of nowhere to harass Kirie whenever she is coming home from school? Beats me. That little subplot adds nothing to the larger film and goes nowhere in a hurry. Too, I would like an explanation concerning those kids standing in the hallway, or the kids I thought I saw walking backwards in the background. How does this relate to the ever increasing presence of the spirals? I'll admit these eerie scenes--seemingly thrown into the story in an offhand way--add much to the creepy atmosphere of the film, but they also serve to muddy a lot of the film's plot. I'm not the sort who needs every little thing explained in minute detail, but even I like to have solidity from time to time. That's why I think there are elements in the film that don't translate over to an American audience. The few extras on the disc do little to shed light on this mysterious film. A behind the scenes featurette, the most likely candidate for concrete answers, consists of scene set ups and a short talk with Eriko Hatsune in which the girl answers questions about her favorite spiral shaped foods! Unfathomable as it is, "Uzumaki" makes up for its shortcomings with good gore, nice camerawork, and an idea taken straight out of the Twilight Zone. I recommend it highly for these reasons alone.