Elite
Home Entertainment | Review
by Crites
"The
uzumaki is sublime. It is, in itself, the
greatest work of art," says one of
UZUMAKI's doomed characters. It is also,
as the packaging tells us, "Something
new to be afraid of." Both of these
statements prove apt in the following presentation,
a modern Japanese horror classic based on
the manga by Junji Ito that revolves around
the more sinister aspects of the seemingly
innocent design of the spiral.
After some misleadingly benign
traditional introductory elements, UZUMAKI
opens up with the scene of a student lying
on the ground with his skull shattered.
The camera makes this death scene hypnotically
grotesque by spiraling slowly upward, capturing
not only the spiral pattern on the floor
beneath the body but the fact that the corpse
lies at the bottom of a spiral staircase.
And this single scene evokes the entire
essence of Uzumaki perfectly, setting the
stage for a curious and ghastly drama that,
literally, contain nothing but twists.
The story begins with pretty
schoolgirl Kirie Goshima (Eriko Hatsune)
finding herself late for class. As she runs
down the hill, through and around the maze
of Kurozu-Cho's scenic neighborhoods, she
also seems to run a sort of gauntlet –
after being braced by a startling wind Kirie
must bypass local pest Yamaguchi as well
as the unsettling sight of a friend's father
engrossed in the filming of a large garden
snail. She finally meets up with loyal friend
Saito Shuichi (Fhi Fan) for a bicycle ride
to school, and as she rides side-saddle
on his bike, coasting down the twisting
village road, the scenery slows and gentle
music swells to emphasize the film's only
truly happy and pastoral scene. Even as
she returns home that evening Saito's father,
the videographer, is transmitting his mania
for the uzumaki to Kirie's father the pottery
maker.
The next day at school Kirie
and her girlfriend Shiho, along with a number
of other students, witness the 'accident'
that prefaced the film. ("They said
he was doing acrobatics on the handrail."
"But didn't he look like he had a smile
on his face?") The significance of
the spiral staircase isn't lost on Saito,
who makes his feelings plain – "This
town's cursed by the uzumaki." He explains
to Kirie how lately his father has become
completely enraptured by the spiral, to
the point where the obsession has literally
taken over his life. His story is vividly
illustrated by a series of flashbacks that
include a bizarre collection and a mad dinner
scene. And yet the curse has really only
just begun.
Upon going to Saito's home
that night Kirie witnesses Mr. Shuichi's
madness in person, and promptly faints dead
away at his display of 'making one's own
spiral.' Later, while delivering a spiral-patterned
dish from her father to Mr. Shuichi, Kirie
discovers an even more extreme manifestation
of his spiral mania...
At his funeral, the sight
of spiral-shaped cloud formations sends
Saito's mother Yukie into hysterics, landing
her in the hospital. While there Saito and
Kirie meet reporter Tamura Ichiro, who had
been approached by Mr. Shuichi about the
uzumaki some time before. Far from being
hypnotized by the spiral, Tamura instead
has an active interest in researching the
phenomenon and makes plans to explore the
town's history as well as the bizarre ritual
Mr. Shuichi was engaged in at the time of
his death.
As Tamura drives Kirie home
they nearly run down her father. Covered
in mud, he's making his way back from gathering
clay at Dragonfly Pond, the town's fabled
body of water and, coincidentally, the same
spot in which the spiraling smoke from the
mortuary's crematorium touched down during
the funeral. Back at the hospital Saito
checks in on his mom, only to find that
in her "spirophobia" she's cut
off her own fingertips in order to get rid
of the whorls of her fingerprints.
Researching uzumaki and its
link to Kurozu-Cho, Tamura uncovers connections
between snakes, mirrors and Dragonfly Pond,
and draws some important conclusions. He
arranges to meet Kirie and Saito at the
pond, but as they convene Yamaguchi, in
a fit of passion, chooses that moment to
demonstrate his love for Kirie. As she and
Saito watch helplessly, Yamaguchi throws
himself in front of Tamura's car, causing
an extremely gory accident in which both
the pest and the reporter are killed.
That night at the hospital
a large millipede crawls into Yukie's room,
curling up the leg of her bed and finding
its way unerringly into her ear. She awakes
with a scream and destroys the unwelcome
creature, but as she sits on the floor in
shock she's beset by hallucinatory waves
of spirals in which a vision of her dead
husband appears to her. In a mesmerizing
voice the grotesque visage tells her of
his desire to enter her and sleep with the
spiral inside of her, inside her ear. And
Yukie just can't have that...
At her funeral the spiral
stormclouds appear again, this time accompanied
by enormous ghostly faces. A major typhoon
is bearing down upon Kurozu-Cho, and reporters
arriving at the seaside town quickly pick
up on the strange goings-on there. Particularly
the town's giant snails – the spiral
has slowly begun to infect and consume people
physically as well as mentally, as students
began to ooze slime and develop coil-shaped
growths upon their backs, ultimately transforming
into hybrid creatures more snail than human.
Seen crawling up and down the walls of the
high school, the human snails seem to have
eventually disappeared into the hills.
This newscast causes Saito
to repeat his belief that the town is doomed,
and he urges Kirie to leave the village
with him. She agrees, but when they stop
to pick up her father the spirals come out
in force...
With its theme of an otherworldly
presence insinuating itself into a small
community and gradually corrupting it to
the point of destruction, UZUMAKI has been
compared to the work of H.P. Lovecraft.
But the film also bears a strong resemblance
to themes found in stories by Brian Lumley
and Patricia Highsmith, particularly in
regard to the supernatural behavior and
appearance of the snails. And it would be
harder to find better inspiration than these
sources for a surprisingly creepy, and surprisingly
engaging, horror film.
The focus on the element of
the spiral is an excellent gimmick, both
visually and psychologically. Derived from
the circle the spiral may be seen as one
of the most elemental and archetypal of
designs, a coil pulled either upward or
downward to signify depth and progression,
and the form conveniently appears in nature,
art and architecture, making it a perfectly
insidious emblem. As evoked by the cinematography,
the use of circular/spiral camera motion
does an admirable job of drawing the viewer
into the world of UZUMAKI, often with unsettling
visceral results. The wipes from one scene
to another even mimic the spiral as closely
as possible, and much of the film's movement
and scenery are designed specifically in
accord with this shape (Kirie's circular
downhill run to school; the return again
and again to the Saitos' fateful washing
machine, etc.). Even the delineation of
the film itself follows this design, as
the action follows a progression of descent
that ends very near to where it began, moving
past what seems to be a final scene of alien
tranquility to its own point of origin (Kirie
speaking of her home town providing both
the introduction and conclusion to the film).
The film itself can thus be seen as an uzumaki
of its own, one that literally spirals out
of control.
Building upon this dizzying
theme are inventive shots that seem to come
from out of nowhere, enhancing the simultaneous
senses of absorption and disassociation/dissolution.
A scene plays out backwards, unusual lenses
and angles of frame are brought into play,
photographs move as a frame-by-frame cinematograph,
and colors flare with psychotropic intensity.
A moving spiral even appears, barely visible,
as part of the background in numerous shots,
a not-so-random reminder of the inescapable
influence of the eternal symbol. Within
the framework of the film there is literally
no escape from the uzumaki.
The widescreen presentation
of the film glows beautifully, a perfectly
bright reminder of why movies ought to be
shot on film. The photography brings to
life both the natural and supernatural elements
of the film, either in brilliant color-drenched
scenery or with the haunted green pond scum
sheen that infuses other modern horror such
as THE RING. The sound quality, newly remixed
Dolby Digital 5.1, is amazing as well –
not only is the eerie TWIN PEAKS-style score
by Keichi Suzuki and Tetsuro Kashibuchi
lush and enveloping, but the subtly exaggerated
sound effects are crisp enough to make your
skin crawl – eyeballs roll squishily
in their sockets, and the millipede's progress
up a bed post sounds like a Slinky dragged
across a metal pipe.
The English subtitles can
be turned on or off, and bonus features
include a trailer and a well-made behind
the scenes featurette as well as a segment
of "Mr. Saito's Camcorder Footage."
All around, UZUMAKI is a valuable
and worthwhile addition to any video library.
