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Customer Reviews of Uzumaki

A brilliant nightmare
Thank goodness this finally made it to US distribution, hopefully it will add to the audience. "Uzumaki", or "Spiral" is a unique vision. The movie is from a Japanese comic, and the story is much more extensive than appears here. The source is probably unknown to most in the US, but that doesn't really matter.

There are images in this film that are absolutely stunning. I would have to rank the subtle appearance of spirals in the sky over the shoulders of the main characters as one of the most memorable effects ever, it certainly shook me. It's brief and not immediately noticeable, and when the scene shifts the first time through, the after effect is earthshaking . . . did I really see that? You knew the film was creepy going in, and it's not the first foreshadow of things going out of control, but it cannot be disregarded as anything but a crack in reality beyond that point, clouds don't do that! Now you know where you're at, and the rest of the film can be accepted. It's a wonderful trick, not the first time it's been done (there's a similar scene in "Close Encounters"), but it shows the film maker is a student of the craft and can apply lessons learned with cunning.

The film would be fun enough just with the idea and the visuals involved, but the leading characters are wonderfully played and add a great deal of depth. I really liked the young girl, she exemplifies everything that should be about the heroine in a horror flick; beauty, intelligence, innocence, love. The actress is an absolute doll, but there is real substance to her part. You know her, what she thinks, what her life is all about to this young age, the tragedy of her mother's death, and her deep relationship with her friend. It wasn't necessary to have such a character in a horror film like this, she could have been just a standard type, not much much different than Steve McQueen in the "Blob". Well done indeed.

For a few days after I first saw this film, I began to notice spirals everywhere around me, and I still smile when I see one . . . uzumaki, I whisper to myself.

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Bizarre turmoil...
Uzumaki is a bizarre film about some spine-chilling occurrences involving a teenager, Kirie, that take place in a small Japanese town. It begins when Kirie discovers her friend's father videotaping a small snail and she is completely unaware of the significance of what he is doing. However, the minute incident of her friend's father begins to snowball and she realizes that she has a monstrous disaster on her hands. Uzumaki can be described as a horror film where Alice is visited by the Wonderland instead of going there herself, which causes some interesting cerebral turmoil. In the end, Higuchinsky creates an eerie cinematic experience of reasonable quality.