Uzumaki

November 4, 2004 | 9 Comments

I'm suffering from another bout of anime-overload here so I thought I'd watch something different for a change. If you're here because you're looking for some information or scans for that Naruto art book, however, you're in the wrong place. The article you're looking for is here. This Uzumaki is actually a live-action adaptation of Junji Ito's famous horror manga of the same name. The film seems to be an okay adaptation of the manga. It doesn't have the same intensity of terror that the manga offers, and some of its storyline are altered here. But the fact that it's a live-action makes the terror slightly more realistic. Having said that, I dislike the fact that the first quarter of the film looks more campy than creepy. But thankfully the rest of the film makes up for this flaw. Before I continue, please be aware that the following paragraphs are full of spoilers and some of the screenshots are quite graphic.

The film begins with a shot of a sad-looking eye belonging to a girl. The girl says that she wants to tell a story about her hometown, Kurozucho. The camera then cuts to a perfect frame of the manga scene where the protagonist, Kirie Goshima, stands on top of a hill, looking down at Kurozucho. She then makes her way down the hill but senses something coming her way. Is it just the wind or something more malicious? She continues walking but is shocked when a guy suddenly appears in front of her. The guy, Yamaguchi, likes Kirie but she doesn't like him because he tends to scare her off like this. So Kirie bolts her way out of the place and eventually sees a middle aged man in the middle of filming something. When she gets closer, she realises that the man is none other than her boyfriend's father. But despite her attempt to greet him, he seems to be transfixed in filming the spiral pattern on a snail so Kirie decides to leave him alone.

The film then introduces Kirie's boyfriend, Shuichi Saito. Shuichi tells Kirie that he's been having problem with his father. Apparently his father has been obsessed with spiral patterns lately to the point of obsessively filming those objects. True enough, when Kirie returns to her home, she sees Shuichi's father talking to her father about the spiral pattern on the pots that her father is making. Kirie, however, decides to say nothing and just go back to her room. She then reminisces her childhood times with Shuichi especially about the way he promised to protect her after Kirie's mother died. Anyway, the next day at school, Yamaguchi tries to shock Kirie again. Because of this, Kirie's friend take her away from that freak but on their way to another floor, they see something plummeting down from the top floor. They are horrified when they realised that that something is none other than one of the students.

Soon, everything begins to turn upside-down in Kurozucho. Shuichi's father, for example, insists that he only wants to eat Uzumaki Naruto fish roll (that pink/white spiral stick you can get at Japanese convenience store) and when his wife runs out of that roll, he becomes angry at her. Another classmate of Kirie's then turns up to the class after being absent for so long. Just like a snail, he seems to have a habit of getting out of his house only when it's raining. On top of things, he has this *shudder - has horrible memory of Silent Hill 1* snail-looking hump on his back. Shuichi's father obsession then reaches its fever pitch one day when he kills himself in a rather unusual way. See the screenshot if you want to know what I'm talking about. When his family try to burn his body, however, the fumes that comes out of the furnace turns into a spiral-like pattern, making this scene a second perfect frame translation of the manga.

After the death of Shuichi's father, Shuichi's mother becomes increasingly terrified of spiral patterns to the point that she wants to get rid of everything in her body that has spiral patterns. It doesn't take a genius to figure what she's about to do to her fingers. Shuichi's father death, however, also attracts the attention of a reporter who decides to help Shuichi investigating the reason behind his death. Shuichi himself, however, believes that the town is cursed and urges Kirie to run away from the town to save herself before it's too late. Kirie, however, still doesn't believe her boyfriend even though she begins to notice a few weird things happening slowly in her town. For example, her father is now obsessed with making weird spiral patterns on his pot. Another classmate who craves attention decides to style her hair in spiral manner to entrance other classmates. And the guy with the hump on his back has now turns into a humanoid snail. *shudder*

Meanwhile, Yamaguchi decides to confront Shuichi because he thinks Shuichi is the one who's making Kirie uninterested in him. When Kirie finally tells him to get lost, he tells her that he wants to prove his love for her by...jumping in front of a running car. What an idiot. He immediately kills himself and the reporter who's driving in his car and on his way to tell Shuichi about his finding about the spiral pattern. A simple accident caused by the idiocy of an obsessed stalker or the curse taking more victims? The madness of Shuichi's mother also continues. She can't stand the idea that some parts of her body have spiral patterns. So she continues to merrily mutilate herself, much to Shuichi's distress. Shuichi is therefore horrified when he finds out that a vital part of your body has a spiral form. So he decides to hide this knowledge from his mother to prevent further unwanted bloodletting.

Unfortunately, through a rather disgusting circumstance involving a bug, his mother eventually finds out about this fact and eventually, there is another fatality on the town. Depressed with the fact that he's losing his father and mother in a matter of weeks, Shuichi becomes withdrawn from Kirie. It doesn't take long before Shuichi becomes possessed by the spiral as well and begins to twist his body out of control. He, however, manages to tell Kirie to run away and safe herself. The film ends on a rather creepy note with the entire population of Kurozucho slowly being taken over by the spiral madness in one way or the other. This part was quite horrific when it was in its manga form but I find it even horrifying to see this translated into live-action because the terror feels more at home now. Unfortunately, the film ends on a rather abrupt note on this matter as well as on the status of Kirie's well being.

Impression:

This is such a typical Japanese horror film where nothing is explained. Some people will probably dislike this film simply because it doesn't have an explanation for the spiral madness/freaky incidents that happen to the townsfolks. But then again neither was the manga. Besides, I think that things are scarier when you can't explain with your rational mind why horrible things happen to seemingly innocent, normal people. So with that in mind, I think this is an okay adaptation of the manga. It doesn't have the satirical commentary of the Japanese society like the manga but it provides the horror of the original story. As a side note, I notice that the film consistently utilises green hues throughout the film to give the oppressive feeling that surrounds the town. One of these days someone should write an essay on the way green hues are used in films like The Matrix and City of Lost Children to emphasise the oppressive nature of a particular setting.

© memento 2003