Uzumaki (film)
| Uzumaki | |
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Japanese film poster
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| Directed by | Higuchinsky |
| Produced by | Sumiji Miyake |
| Screenplay by | Takao Niita |
| Based on |
Uzumaki by Junji Ito |
| Starring | |
| Music by | |
| Cinematography | Gen Kobayashi |
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Production
companies |
Omega Micott
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Uzumaki (うずまき? Spiral) is a 2000 Japanese horror film based on the manga of the same name. The film was the featured film debut of Akihiro Higuchi under the alias of Higuchinsky and stars Eriko Hatsune, Fhi Fan and Hinako Saeki. The film is about a town infected with malevolent spirals.
The film was backed by Omega Micott, who released the film simultaneously in Japan and in San Francisco to create hype around the film on the Internet. Reviews praised the film's visuals but commented that the film was not entirely effective in being frightening.
The film consists of four parts ("A Premonition", "Erosion", "Visitation", and "Transmigration"). High school student Kirie's first glimpse that something is awry in the small town of Kurouzu comes when the father of her boyfriend (Shuichi) begins to film the corkscrew patterns on a snail; he is also in the process of making a video scrap book filled with the images of anything that has a spiral or vortex shape to it. His weird obsession threatens to go out of control. He proclaims that a spiral is the highest form of art and frantically creates whirlpools in his miso soup when he runs out of spiral patterned Kamaboko. He then becomes one with Uzumaki when he decides to crawl into a washing machine to get a 'point-of-view' shot for his film.
It is not long before the entire town is infected by the otherworldly whirls. Tamura, a reporter, is intrigued by Shuichi's dad's suicide and becomes obsessed with the case. Meanwhile, Kirie's high school is populated by a host of twitching teachers, preening pretty girls, and the slimy Katayama, who begins to walk at a snail's pace and only comes to school when it rains. Making matters worse, the student body is starting to sprout shells, drink water in copious amounts, and crawl on the walls of the school. Sekino, Kirie's classmate, begins to grow her hair in medusa-like curls that eventually take over not only her mind but the minds of all the girls in the school (save for Kirie). Meanwhile, in the hospital, Shuichi's mother, who was hospitalized after her husband's death, cuts off her hair and fingertips in order to get rid of anything spiral-shaped on her body, and grows so afraid of spirals that Shuichi is forced to tell the hospital to eliminate anything spiral-shaped so his mother may not encounter them (even going so far as to throwing away the cakes that Kirie had brought for her mother, since the frosting on the cakes were like whirls). Eventually, Shuichi's mother succumbs to her phobia and kills herself when a millipede tries to crawl into her ear to inhabit her cochlea and causes her to hallucinate about her husband, who tells her that "there's another vortex in the deepest part of your ear". It is not long before even the sky itself is cursed, with whirl-like clouds and the eerily smoky, ghost-like faces of the victims who perished in the grip of Uzumaki appearing during funerals.
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Wikipedia