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It all started rather harmlessly when the father (Ren Osugi) of
highschool student Kirie's (Eriko Hatsune) boyfriend Shuichi (Fhi Fan)
started to become obsessed with spirals and started to collect and/or film
everything that even remotely has to do with spirals, which soon made him
neglect his work. But it soon got worse, when one of Kirie's co-eds threw
himself to his death down a spiral staircase at Kirie's school just
because the spiral seemed to call him. And slowly, other students at her
school started growing spirals on their backs and eventually turned to
human snails.
Then Shuichi's dad kills himself - in a washing machine, because it
creates spirals, and when his body is burned, it creates smoke in the form
of a spioral. Shuichi's mum (Keiko Takahashi) then has a nervous breakdown
and starts developing a phobia of spirals - and she even goes so far as to
cut away the skin on her fingertips because her fingerprints look remotely
like spirals. Then even Kirie's dad (Taro Suwa) kills himself, just
because inside the barrel of his gun there is a spiral ...
Reporter Tamura (Masami Horiuchi) wants to clear the whole thing up and
soon ties the whole spiral-thing to mirrors (?) and a snake cult, but
before he can really do anything, an obnoxious teen (Sadao Abe) runs in
front of his car and is caught in the wheel and turned to a spiral -
neither he nor the reporter survive the crash.
Ultimately, Kirie and Shuichi realize they are the only two left sane,
and they decide to escape the village as quickly as possible ... but when
they are almost gone, the curse of the spiral catches up with Shuichi, and
he is turned into a live spiral, and wants to drag Kirie back with him.
Somehow though she manages to escape ... and just in time too.
The pure concept of this movie (and the comic it is based on) is
nothing short of great: a village possessed/cursed by spirals - have you
ever heard anything quite as crazy or ingenious ?
Unfortunately the film fails to exploit its premise to its full extent
- director Higuchinsky manages to deliver pretty and impressive pictures
of a world that turns more and more into spirals, but on the story level,
the film loses steam after about half an hour - and the film had a slow
start to begin with - and eventually seems to on one hand repeat itself,
on the other hand it starts getting a tad silly (e.g. the human snails),
and in the end, the finale - Shuichi turning into a spiral and trying to
drag Kirie with him - looks like nothing but a boring horror mainstay -
which a film with an unique premise like Uzumaki just doesn't
deserve.
Still, if you are into far-out plots, you might enjoy this ... just
don't expect too much - or see if you can find the comicbook.
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