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With the
setting of a seaside town, its populace slowly being corrupted and
transformed into something "otherworldly, Uzumaki certainly
reminds me first of "Shadows Over Innsmouth" (arguably one of
the most well known Lovecraft tales, and certainly one of the most widely
accepted). This resemblance sat very well with me because, as I have
mentioned already, my favorite Lovecraft translation Dagon is also
based on this story. In Dagon, we are introduced to a small,
old-fashioned community that has sold its very soul to a "god"
from the depths of the ocean. In return, the townspeople are slowly
transforming into monstrous sea-creatures... half-fish and half-man.
In Uzumaki, the small, old-fashioned, seaside town is in Japan, and
the people there are being transfixed, more than transformed, by an
entirely different, but just as sinister, power. The power of the
spiral... From the mouth of Kirie, a young female student from this hamlet of Kurozu, Uzumaki is "the story of a strangeness that happened here." The strangeness begins and ends with spirals. They appear everywhere...from rice cake decorations to the awnings of buildings, from pinwheels to hairstyles. The spiral is an affluent form, and for the people in this town, it has begun to take on arcane meaning. One of the first to notice is Kirie's "boyfriend", Shuichi. It seems that his dad has been acting mighty strange lately and has become obsessed with the form of the spiral. After catching Shuichi's dad video taping a snail as it crawls up a fence in a trance of intense fascination (the shell takes the form of a spiral), Kirie is inclined to believe and share Shuichi's concerns.
Before long, however, the other occupants of this small town all begin to share a fascination with the spiral...even to the point where people begin to act irrationally, and the bizarre behaviors soon lead to deaths. It will be up to Kirie and Shuichi to decipher the hidden meaning behind the spiral and why it holds so much power over the townspeople; but can either of them manage to avoid the madness that seems to be gripping the town at such an unbelievable rate?
Not so much horror as it is purely strange and visually unsettling, Uzumaki manages to be a powerful film of symbolism and hidden meanings, even past a few glaring faults. Based on a popular, 3-part Japanese manga (comic book) by Junji Ito, Uzumaki relies more on suspense, drama, visual atmosphere and dialog than it does on shock value and violent gore. This all works well in its favor, however the acting is purely god-awful and this film does have a serious "what-in-the-hell-is-going-on-here" factor to it. Even having found some of the manga online and having read through several pages of explanation and translation I am a bit lost still. There is a decent amount of kanji that appears throughout the film and much of it is very important to the viewers hope of understanding the full story; this DVD release, however, only has a certain amount of it translated and subtitled. There are online resources available for full translations and I do recommend checking them out after you have watched the full movie.
The spirals here are more than just a plot device, and in fact drive the story almost completely. There are spirals on pieces of pottery, on medical charts, and various other reality based occurrences; but then there are also the spirals that appear in clouds in the sky, spirals in peoples eyes, and even the occasional instance where the filmmakers decided to simply twist a portion of the on-screen image into spiral shapes. This frequent bending of the mental rules produces an unsettling reaction and provides the films main delivery of "creepiness". The films real fun however, is in looking for spirals. There are simply so many that it becomes a challenge to hunt them all down and catalog them for later reference. My favorite was the usage of the numbers 6 and 9 (yes it is spiral in shape and design) for building floors, elevators and of course license plates.
There is a little traditional horror here as well as that of the psychological kind. A bloody car accident, some grotesque transformations and some delightfully used sound effects all deliver on the gross out factor, but not too much. Most of your reaction to this film will be in large part due to the lack of reaction from those characters within it. The fact that this whole town in suddenly under the grip of an evil power which controls through the shape of a spiral should cause some people to question what is going on. Instead, this town merely accepts it as fact and does little to save itself. The moments when a character is slowly going mad are tense and well maneuvered, creating a heightened sense of anticipation in the viewer and making the small amount of gore that there is seem like so much more. Hell, some of the grossest parts that I had read about in other reviews or heard about from those who saw this film before me weren't even shown on screen! When you can make people remember things they have never seen simply by implying them, you have certainly done your job correctly as a director.
The actors however are a different story. I thoroughly enjoyed the performance of the female lead, Eriko Hatsune, although it would seem that not many others appreciate her talents as much. She reminds me quite a bit of a Donny Darko type character who has not a clue as to what is going on, but who is so enraptured by the whole event that not every moment winds up being lucid. Her dreamy trance states are only periodically interrupted with a fit of fear or confusion giving the impression that she cannot keep her characters emotions on the same page, but I think that instead she portrays a very bored, small town girl having the first interesting experience of her life, whether it is tragic or not, and just going with it. Occasionally it gets to be a little much for her and she simply gives in to these weaknesses.
The rest of the cast manages to portray their characters fairly well but never become their characters. You are aware of their motives and impact on the story as a whole, but you never believe that their actions are anything more than scripted events to maneuver us through the bizarre tale. None of the acting is truly poor, but I could have hoped for a bit more.
If you liked the movie Donnie Darko (and we all know that there are those that DO and those that DON'T), than I think that you will enjoy Uzumaki. I can't tell you how many times I have heard the titles Ju-On, Ringu or Audition come up when discussing this movie and I would have to say that it is getting a little tiresome to have every Japanese film compared to a few flicks that the Stateside magazines have given press and which now the American public assumes are the "standard" for J-Horror. Uzumaki is not like these films and isn't supposed to be. This is a bizarre, strange, and twisted (literally) little film that stands on its own ideals and ideas and should be judged accordingly.
I find Uzumaki guilty of second degree originality and premeditated eeriness. The sentence? A minimum of five days rental, to a maximum of life on your DVD shelf without the possibility of trade-in. Your call...
-aaron-
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