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Spiral (Uzumaki)
The movie centers on the inhabitants of a small Japanese town who become increasingly obsessed with and tormented by spirals. This abstract concept manifests in grotesque ways, such as a teenager's long hair beginning to curl and take over her mind, or a corpse wound around itself.
9 August 1954, Tokyo, Japan
12 March 1982, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
23 April 1970, Chiba, Japan
23 January 1950, Fukuoka, Japan
1962
15 February 1973, Seoul, South Korea
23 September 1974, Tokyo, Japan
22 March 1950, Tokyo, Japan
24 March 1982, Tokyo, Japan
22 January 1955, Shibecha-cho, Kawakami-gun, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan
27 September 1951, Tokushima, Japan
16 February 1977, Nara, Japan
9 January 1978, Chiba, Japan
January 15, 2004
Mostly the film creates an infectious feeling of apprehension that slowly crawls up your spine.August 26, 2002
Eerie and slimy enough to give Tim Burton nightmares, Uzumaki is a superb piece of fantasy cinema.September 09, 2002
Succumb to its creepy charms, and you'll never see inner-ear anatomy diagrams, umbrellas, or escargot in quite the same way. You might even hand over laundry chores to someone else.June 03, 2006
A brilliant horror film with an original idea and style to spare.November 03, 2002
Special effects can be tastefully managed even on a shoestring budget, but here they are merely ludicrous.July 12, 2002
Required viewing for horror fans, Japanese-cult-cinema fans, and anyone who digs settling in for an unsettling David Lynch evening.May 01, 2004
'Uzumaki is a masterfully rendered living portrait of warped, apocalyptic art...'February 11, 2010
Pic duly places less emphasis on narrative than on the sort of surreal set pieces that might have worked better in the graphic-novel form.May 15, 2002
Ultimately the, yes, snail-like pacing and lack of thematic resonance make the film more silly than scary, like some sort of Martha Stewart decorating program run amok.May 01, 2002
At some point, all this visual trickery stops being clever and devolves into flashy, vaguely silly overkill.October 03, 2002
Gussied up with so many distracting special effects and visual party tricks that it's not clear whether we're supposed to shriek or laugh.April 18, 2007
Adapted from a horror comic by Junji Ito, this debut feature from Japanese music-video director Higuchinsky begins eerily but doesn't take long to descend into silliness.