Higuchi Akihiro’s Uzumaki (Spiral, 2000), based on Ito Junji’s horror manga, is a horror film of Goshima Kirie’s (Hatsune Eriko) experience when the population in her small hometown becomes bizarrely obsessed with spirals. Goshima is unaware of this strange obsession until her boyfriend, Saito Shuichi (Fhi Fan) warns her about the strange situation with uzumaki. Higuchi has also adapted Ito Junji’s Long Dream (Nagai Yume, 2000) into a television film, but both of these films are not internationally well known.
The story is separated into four chapters, “Premonition”, “Erosion”, “Visitation”, and “Come into the Uzumaki”, and each has significant events. Goshima Kirie narrates the film in regards to her experience with her hometown’s strange behavior and deaths related to uzumaki. At first, she comes across Mr. Saito’s (Ren Ohsugi), Saito’s father, attraction to film the slow movements of a snail on an alley wall. Soon after, she engages in a conversation with Saito about his father. Saito says that his father’s interest in spirals is not just a hobby. It has become an obsession and it is changing him to the point that he is now a father Saito no longer knows and understands. Mr. Saito not only has a huge collection of spiral-related objects, but things are clearly out of control as he only eats things with spirals in it, such as Japanese fish cakes (naruto, fish cakes with a pink spiral), and can drink miso soup only after he creates a spiral with the spinning motion of chopsticks. Mr.Saito’s obsession with spirals soon spreads to Goshima’s father (Tarô Suwa), a ceramist, when Mr. Saito suggests to him that uzumaki is the highest form of art and must be incorporated into his ceramics. The power of uzumaki rapidly spreads throughout the town, and one by one they quickly fall to their inevitable deaths, by turning into human snails, having hair coiled into uzumaki that defies gravity, or turning into uzumaki by committing suicide in a washing machine. The story reaches its climax when Goshima finally realizes that uzumaki has possessed this town and needs to find a way to escape this terrifying power.
The film’s theme, terror of spirals, is simple and yet interesting. Uzumaki clearly depicts the horrors of spirals. Firstly, it presents spirals as an unbelievable attraction just like many illusions and puzzles. However, in uzumaki one can never escape once they have been drawn in. Other than the characters dying in a series of accidents and suicides due to obsession with uzumaki, there are many little spirals that are lurking within the film, such as the close-up shots on the spinning wheels of a bicycle or cars, the wind blowing leaves in a circular form, the spiral staircase, and the random spirals occurring in the sky, and on the floor. Higuchi also choose to film with green colour filters causing the whole film to have a greenish background. The greenish colour adds to the creepy nightmarish atmosphere and gives the town a characteristic of deterioration and destruction. Higuchi also uses spinning shots often with the characters’ head in the middle. This strangely attracts attention and causes an unsettling feeling. The image of uzumaki is situated in every part of the film in a variety of ways. While Uzumaki takes over the lives of the characters, it is not until the end that one realizes that the film was taken over by uzumaki at the very beginning.
The character Goshima Kirie is very interesting because she never demonstrates any sign of extreme fear facing the obsession with spirals situation. Even after witnessing the death of a classmate failing off a spiral staircase, she is able to recover soon after. Moreover, a few days later, when she witnesses the death of Mr. Saito in the washing machine, she faints after the incident but she is able to recover the next day as if everything is back to normal. She is definitely aware of spirals taking over but does not acknowledge it as a problem and something she should worry about. Even when Saito warns her as he becomes more and more suspicious about the power of uzumaki, she is merely listening to his observations. She is a passive character, who does not actively look for how to fight against uzumaki, or run away from it. Nonetheless, it is because she is such an innocent and simple-minded character that audiences are able to enjoy the story in an unbiased, and surrealistic manner.
The film contains many disturbing and bloody scenes and viewer’s discretion is advised. The film’s theme of spirals is twisted and may cause uneasiness for the audience. After the screening of Uzumaki, one may never look at spirals in the same way again. It was not a great film, but it was still an enjoyable film. The story’s idea is simple but extremely bizarre. This film is recommended to those who wish to see a creepy and unsettling thriller.