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As is frequently the case when Manga is translated into live action, there is quite a bit lost in the translation. However, this remains a highly entertaining film. The premise is unusual and it is presented in the quiet, understated style so prevalent in Japanese films (ha!). The special effects are a little 70s camp but, it adds to the comic book feel of the film. I wouldn't recommend this film to everyone but, if you are familiar with (and enjoyed) other Japanese horror films like "Evil Dead's Trap", this film will appeal to you.

UZUMAKI (aka: SPIRAL) is a bizarre film, in a good way. It's about a high school girl named Kirie (Erico Hatsune), who lives in a small town in Japan. Right from the outset, things begin changing around her, leading to a sort of madness and death among those in her life. There's an odd obsession with spirals that appears to enter and take total control of the mind. This is presented in a truly disturbing way.

Is it a curse? Mass insanity? Something in the atmosphere?

There are several spiral shapes, like a snail shell, a beauty salon sign, a piece of pottery, etcetera. However, as you watch, you will notice spirals where there really shouldn't be any. This messes with the viewer's head, and really ups the creep factor. While there are some gruesome parts, it's the unsettling nature of the film that makes it scary.

Having watched this, it's hard to believe that Director Higuchinsky only made one other horror movie...

Hypnotists can use a rotating spiral to send their subjects into a trance; director Higuchinsky risks achieving the same result with his dreamlike horror movie Uzumaki, which makes very little sense and crawls along at a snail's pace.

Fortunately, just like the many spirals that proliferate the film, Uzumaki is extremely twisted stuff and, with its impressive visuals and creepy atmosphere, should prove intriguing enough for fans of bizarre Japanese cinema to resist falling asleep.

Eriko Hatsune plays pretty schoolgirl Kirie Goshima, who comes to realise that her home town has fallen under the influence of spirals (that's right, you read correctly.... spirals). Members of her community are becoming obsessed with the shape, which results in some downright strange behaviour and even physical transformation: there is a spate of suicides, a man loses control of his eyeballs, a girl grows medusa-like gravity defying hair, and people even turn into snails!

The film is split into four chapters—Premonition, Erosion, Visitation, and Transmigration (although these titles do nothing to help explain what the hell is going on)—and each is weirder than its predecessor; by the end of the final chapter, almost nothing has been resolved, but viewers will at least have been treated to some very memorable scenes of Asian weirdness, a couple of unexpected, gory deaths, and some subtle subliminal whorls hidden amongst the action to keep sharper-eyed viewers happy.

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

I think it was an interesting movie that you give a lot of thought to afterwards, but it was a little overwhelming and confusing. I loved the eeriness of the film though, the whole time it felt like I was watching somebody's nightmare. It's so all over the place. That's the only way I can describe the movie. It perfectly captures a feeling of disturbance in a dream and not understanding what it is because you're dreaming, and as you're dreaming that feeling grows more until it manifests into or as something in your dream. I hope someone understands what I'm talking about. The story is unsettling and intriguing at the same time and I wish this movie would be more popular despite it being a little terrible. There will definitely be better adaptations though lol.

I noticed a lot of reviews for this film were older, it seems like a number of people watched during the wave of the import DVD scene in the early 2000's. I read Uzumaki last year, and then saw a number of good reviews, so I expected a little more from the film. Still was managing my expectations that it would be a solid adaptation of the manga based off others. For that matter, I always try to separate adaptations and judge a product on it's own merits, however this film falls very short.

The film looks cheap - tacky spiral effects in the background and fast cuts (bordering on spastic at some points) do not do the film any favors. Also the editing is something like a school video project, using all kinds of odd "fades" and "screen wipes" that really seem dated to a modern audience. The film never takes itself too seriously and it is styled almost like a comedy, yet the tone is inconsistent. They toss in cheap jump scares that are out of nowhere. There are a few scenes that establish a creepy atmosphere, but that gets tossed out the window with a bad edit or goofy scene every time; the potential gets squandered.

The acting is pretty stale in a lot of parts, and I think some of blame falls on the director's camera techniques. Often I felt he was highlighting a weaker performance with his shots, zooming in on actor's faces like a soap opera. If he had instead spent more effort focusing on atmosphere or building tension I think the story really could have benefited. The story is somewhat vague and had I not read the source material I wonder if I would have been able to follow it at all. To me that is the biggest problem, by picking and choosing bits from the manga and changing too many other things to condense it into a film, it is a half-baked product to the core. Fans of the manga will be disappointed, while newcomers may not be sure what is going on.

Alright, I've gotta be that guy.... If you choose to watch this film and think it has some good ideas, check out the manga. It is much richer and more rewarding. Everything is better connected and well explained, the vibe is much creepier. I can pretty much guarantee you'll dig it. If you read the manga a while ago, and want to turn your brain off for 90 minutes, it does have some cool moments but really lacks any payoff. It is totally skippable otherwise. I only finished it out of inertia - I was ready to tap out around halfway through but decided to finish it off when I saw it a short feature. If the movie worked on it's own I would say check it out, but don't waste your time.

2/10

A town in Japan is being taken over by a horribly brutal abstract shape: the spiral. It's becoming a theme in everything from animals to clouds to people and twisting them, mentally and literally. This film shows it happening to several groups of people. Some demonic possession is implied, but nothing is entirely sure except that the best bet is to get the heck out of dodge. The film progresses really well from normal life to abnormal phenomena (giant snails and crazy people) to the truly supernatural (walking dead).

As a jaded American horror movie fan, this was just what I needed. Maybe it was just the novelty of a different culture's film, but it seemed to have a very original progression, set of characters, and the premise was definitely new. The Japanese may think "horror shapes" (uzumaki means "spiral," I'm told) are old by now, but it was nice for me because I'm used to monster/alien/virus/disaster/undead films. In an American movie, you know who's going to die (the annoying/nasty/lascivious/racist characters) and who will live (the children/heroine/dogs/cats/nice guy). That's not true in Japanese horror. It was not predictable how they would fight the evil or how it would end up. Also, it had this really new (but probably typically Japanese) color leached Pacific Northwest style cloudy day thing going, which was a fresh visual effect for me. The horrific moments were seriously creepy, relying on a little gore but mainly just impossibly overdone facial expressions (think The Ring) and body manipulations. This should be one of the greats, up there with once-original ideas like the first Nightmare on Elm Street or Night of the Living Dead.

This movie is actually pretty good at first. Stylishly directed with interesting visual ideas and an intriguing start. In spite of some spotty acting it feels pretty professional and well made. But the complete absence of any sort of explanation for the film's rather absurd concept is increasingly bothersome. At first I thought, perhaps it's a symbolic movie shot like a horror movie, but by the last third it had made it pretty clear that it was just a bad horror movie with a dumb premise and no interest in explaining it's seemingly random slew of events. One is left with nothing but loose ends and some last scenes that are utterly laughable. Still, parts of it are really cool and I did enjoy most of it, so I give it 6/10.

OK, let me start off by saying this isn't a horrible movie by any means. It's just not good. I recall one poster saying the acting isn't campy it's just nuanced. No. I've seen nuanced Japanese and Asian acting. I'm sorry, you're wrong. This is camp.

The characters are totally unsympathetic, the deaths are totally random and utterly meaningless. The writing is bad. I'm fine with suspending disbelief, I'm fine with not having everything handed to me in terms of plot. But this movie has no plot. One reviewer stated "This movie is set in a small town where people are going nuts over vortexes and spirals." That's not a blurb, that's the entire freaking film. Congratulations, I've just saved you nearly an hour and a half. There is nothing more to it. No character development, no plot development, no explanations, no resolution. And not even the "Acceptable within the realm of J-Horror" lack of resolution. Just nothing.

In addition, the musical score is done by someone who obviously wasn't actually watching the movie at the time because it's random enough to cause whiplash. Cognitive dissonance is one thing and done well it can be brilliant (see Dark Water), but here it just seems as if the score was designed to go with another movie all together.

The best example I can give is it's as if the Japanese remade Evil Dead without any of the clever bits or good acting. It just falls flat. It's J-horror without the horror.

"Uzumaki" takes place in a small Japanese rural town,where people are going mad.They go nuts over vortexes and spirals.The crisis is getting worse,because people are turning into snails and vortexes appear everywhere."Uzumaki" has to be one of the most bizarre and original horror movies I have seen.The plot is really clever and the gore scenes are really funny as the film doesn't takes itself too seriously."Uzumaki" is wonderfully photographed and the use of colors is top-notch.The characters are likeable and there is enough shocking surprises to satisfy fans of Japanese horror.Despite of some hilarious scenes,the overall tone of this film is pretty dark."Uzumaki" is not as good as "Ringu","Ju-on" or "Audition",but if you like Japanese horror movies you won't be disappointed.7 out of 10.

This film is full of bizarre images inspired by the Manga from which it is drawn. Rotating eyeballs, monster hair, death by washing machine...these are not your everyday occurrences. In the end though, I felt like I had missed something....it's an entertaining ride, but the story just doesn't go anywhere.

First of all - don't expect horror movie. I did and I was quite disappointed - not even by the lack of actual "horror" - much more by poor CG and lack of any sensible explanation(s). I could live with that, but what really bothers me - it looks like creators of Uzumaki themselves had no idea how to explain events (or at least develop a story). The movie IS twisted, like - well - home of a snail. Some people compare it to creations of David Lynch. There is one resemblance - Lynch also often has no idea how to clarify his story. Strange - or rather weird - things happen all the time but often without any particular reason. After the movie ended I felt like after watching "Twilight Zone" mixed with a pinch of "Tales from the Crypt" and all that shoot in "Ringu" style. Such blend sounds promising, but Uzumaki doesn't keep its promise - it's simply too uneven. In addition all actual action concentrates on scenes with CG effects, which are often so poor that they will make you laugh. Everything between them (while quite stylish) may bore you to death - especially if you're not a Ringu fan. A pity.

But there are two things that I actually "won" by watching this movie. The first one is end credits song (fortunately credited not with Japanese Kana, but Latin characters) - "Raven" by "Do As Infinity". I've found the video for it - and it basically contains all the action and special effects of the movie. If you will watch it before the movie - chances are that it will spare you the disappointment. And the song is really great!

Second great thing about Uzumaki is its origin - the comic book. After finding out it's based on a comic I understood why it recalls "Tales from the Crypt" so noticeably... But Uzumaki comic is simply great! The story is very well developed and everything makes *much* more sense than in the movie - and that's quite strange because the movie is quite heavily based on the comic! Unfortunately all threads are mixed and twisted (pun intended), and the final effect is much worse than its origin.

My final grade for Uzumaki is 5/10 - it doesn't mean that the movie is average. It's simple an average of what I want and would like to give it (i.e. 3/10 - 7/10).

Uzumaki is an entertaining film for any horror fan. True, cultural differences between Japanese and American perceptions create some difficulty in fully appreciating the horror aspects. I found some of the film slightly funny instead of scary; but it is captivating nevertheless. I believe that if I were to view more films of the genre I could fully appreciate the intent of this film, because it is skillfully done. There are subtleties that I perceived, but that did not fully impact me. I hope to see the film again soon. One reviewer lamented the want of a DVD that we can all play on our equipment. I must concur that it's a shame, because this is a film I would love to own.

The little lead actress is compelling and quite adept. Her delicate and minute facial expressions mirror her dialogue well, and this comes across even with the subtitles. I think her performance is what kept me intrigued with the film long enough to really get into it and keep watching. I recommend that if you are a horror fan, and see this film playing, take the time to see and enjoy it.

It's entertaining and funny. The original plot is not well-developed, but what should we expect from a TV-made production, right? The manga obviously is way more atmospheric, graphic, and dark, but it is what it is.

This deserves points for being probably the only movie ever made in which a shape is the focus for horror. In this case the shape is the humble spiral ("uzuamki" in Japanese).

This film takes place in a small town where the residents slowly become obsessed with spiral patterns which end up causing grotesque physical mutations in people.

It is a deeply strange movie that starts off almost as a kind of wacky dark comedy, but becomes progressively darker and weirder as it goes on. It's stylishly made with a variety of impressive cinematic pyrotechnics, some of them very subtle, such as the small, almost hidden spiral patterns appearing in various scenes. The main flaw with the film is the ending, which is kind of abrupt, also it tries but never quite manages to recreate the nightmarish images in the original comic series.

This is well worth checking out for horror fans who are looking for something truly unique.

A girl begins to notice that people in her small town are becoming fascinated by anything that is shaped like a spiral. Soon, the fascination turns to obsession and things get deadly. While I won't say that "Uzumaki" was an excellent film, I will say that it was unlike anything I've seen before. Throughout my viewing, I felt like I was watching a cartoon. There are funny segues between scenes and characters with digitally enhanced eyes. Later, I found out the film is an adaptation of a manga comic, so this makes sense. However, just when you think you are watching something that could be a kid's movie, you are bombarded with nasty and gory visuals! The story often lags and the ending is somewhat abrupt and seemed anti-climactic at the time, but in retrospect I appreciate it more for its originality. My Rating: 7/10.

I watched this movie a couple of years ago, and when I first saw it I was just annoyed by it, since the story didn't make any sense at all. There are hardly any hints about what might be going on in this village and in the end you're left with no clue at all. For some movies of that genre this works just fine for me to a certain extent, I just didn't like the way Uzumaki left you completely in the dark.

Maybe if you knew the Manga, you'd be able to understand a lot more, so this review probably isn't of much value for you and if you just want to watch something strange I guess this movie will satisfy you, and admittedly can be entertaining to some degree.

There were plenty of good things about Uzumaki. Strange, beautiful imagery. Innovative bits of editing. General weird occurrences--people turning into giant snails, crematory smoke forming giant twisting spirals in the sky, a whirled-up corpse in a washing machine. I noticed a lot of David Lynch influence on Uzumaki, as has been noted by other reviewers, particularly in the use of disturbing extreme close-ups (the man eating the spiral fish cakes), in the establishing shots of the town, and in the use of music at times, but Uzumaki's definitely got its own unique style as well. Act 4, I thought, was particularly brilliant, with the bizarro comic-bookish montage of still images to finish out the story, slightly reminiscent of La Jetee.

But bad acting. I couldn't tell if it was intentionally bad to create a comic effect, like David Lynch uses to such great effect sometimes, or if it was just bad acting. It seemed like a little bit of both.

No dramatic tension. There were characters on screen, and they were doing things and walking around and driving around, and sometimes interesting stuff was happening, but there just wasn't any reason to care about any of them. Likewise, there wasn't much of a story I could care about. And while the imagery was fantastic, it wasn't enough to hold my interest for an hour in a half in an uncomfortable theater seat. I often seem to have the same reaction to David Cronenberg's and Peter Greenaway's films. No real emotional content.

Uzumaki could have been a brilliant short film, but there's not enough meat to make it a compelling feature.

Why is it that every theater that would screen a film like Uzumaki seems to have such incredibly cramped and uncomfortable seating?

I happen to have read all of Junji Ito's English released manga. I watched the Tomie film and it was a big steaming pile of turd. THANKFULLY Uzumaki actually does justice to the manga. I think those who have read the manga will really appreciate this film more, as many screenshots and camera angles are exactly like in the manga and it is interesting to see how the book characters are played in the film. This film reminds me of eerie indiana. The ending differs to the manga, which I was expecting. Kirie looks like her manga counterpart, and her male friend suits the whole very well. Very creepy I have to admit, this film feels like a feverish nightmare, the kind you have when you were a kid. Not really scary at all, but freaky, if you get my drift? Another great horror from Japan, get yourself a copy.

Not all Japanese horror films will be remade by Hollywood. This certainly won't be one. For Hollywood to attempt a remake the film needs to be good in the first place.

From the start of the film a few things come to notice, these are: -

(i) the acting is not good, (ii) the director has gone for a lot of darkness in the scenes (dark isn't always scary), (iii) the film was obviously made on a shoe-string budget, (iv) the film was probably not made with Western audiences in mind (after seeing Ringu, Dark Water to compare ones that were).

For me the film was neither scary, interesting, gory or surprising, just very strange. The people affected by the uzumaki seemed delirious like they were on drugs. Were the producer and director likewise on something?

The plot is a bit weak , there were so many things that could have made it better, its frustrating to think 'that must be what's happening', only to discover that you were wrong and that your idea was better.

When you're short on budget it's not always a good idea to go for too many effects, so what there was looked silly.

I really couldn't recommend this film unless you specifically want a bizarre film with worse than school play acting.

I gave it 3/10. If you want Eastern horror and you haven't seen them yet then go with Kairo, Ju-on, Ringu, Dark Water, The eye and A Tale of Two Sisters.