User Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

"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.

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.

This film Uzumaki "The Vortex" is a pretty weird experiment in cinema and a proud part of my vast movie collection,its a strange movie about a town that gets posessed or cursed by the VORTEX damnation,A lot of people start going insane about the shapes of the spiral in the VORTEX to the point in which some choose to die by becoming a VORTEX themselves, I know that whats new is J-Horror or Japanese Horror as people know, but this film really takes the cake, it has no visible comparition to any other J-Horror movie (Ringu,etc,etc) because its a twister of twisted material for your eyes, its a nightmare from which its hard to wake up. I really recommend this film for Japanese Horror movie fans and weird movie fans like Eraserhead and stuff that plays with your mind, the movie is a little slow and has no start nor ending to the story, actually the ending is kind of stupid but the whole thing works. Check it out.Ill give it a good 9 out of 10 on Scare factor on J-Horror movies.

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.

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 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.

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.

I'm a horror movie freak, and this has got to be one of the most phenomenal horror flicks I've ever seen. The plotline is totally original (who else would think up a town who gets totally obsessed with a certain symbol to the point of death and insanity?), the special effects are amazing, and the cinematography couldn't be better. Some may find it disturbing, but that doesn't mean it's a bad movie. It also makes a good point. The spiral symbol is kinda ubiquitous. The spiral notebook, spiral seashells, spirals on cakes. Of all the shapes they could have used (square, triangle, trapezoid, rectangle) this was one of the best choices. If you can find this movie, definitely see it. It's certainly unique, and quite unforgettable.

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.