Uzumaki (2000)
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Reviews Counted: 24
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 11
Uzumaki uses its creepy, David Lynch-inspired atmospherics to effectively build a sense of dread, but ultimately fails to do anything with it.
Average Rating: 4.4/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 6
Uzumaki uses its creepy, David Lynch-inspired atmospherics to effectively build a sense of dread, but ultimately fails to do anything with it.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 6,232
Movie Info
Based on the phenomenally popular horror manga by Junji Ito, Uzumaki is the debut feature of Japanese music video director Higuchinsky (born Akirhiro Higuchi). Something strange is going on in the small town of Kurozu-cho. Kirie Goshima (Ericko Hatsune) notices Toshio Saito (popular character actor Ren Osugi), the father of her longtime friend, Shuichi (Fhi Fan), videotaping an extreme close-up of the spiral pattern on a snail's shell. Shuichi explains that his father is acting strangely, and
May 3, 2002 Wide
Jul 6, 2004
Cast
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Ren Osugi
Toshio Saito -
Hinako Saeki
Kayodo Sekino -
Keiko Takahashi
Yukie Saito -
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All Critics (24) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (13) | Rotten (11) | DVD (8)
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.
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.
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.
Required viewing for horror fans, Japanese-cult-cinema fans, and anyone who digs settling in for an unsettling David Lynch evening.
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.
At some point, all this visual trickery stops being clever and devolves into flashy, vaguely silly overkill.
A brilliant horror film with an original idea and style to spare.
'Uzumaki is a masterfully rendered living portrait of warped, apocalyptic art...'
Mostly the film creates an infectious feeling of apprehension that slowly crawls up your spine.
Special effects can be tastefully managed even on a shoestring budget, but here they are merely ludicrous.
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.
Eerie and slimy enough to give Tim Burton nightmares, Uzumaki is a superb piece of fantasy cinema.
A somewhat satisfying, because of its uniqueness, but ultimately empty horror chiller.
... less a story than an inexplicable nightmare, right down to the population's shrugging acceptance to each new horror.
Uzumaki's interesting social parallel and defiant aesthetic seems a prostituted muse...
Beautiful, cold, oddly colorful and just plain otherworldly, a freaky bit of art that's there to scare while we delight in the images.
One of the film's strongest achievements is the way it manages to get so much mileage out of such a simple concept as spirals.
Got a David Lynch jones? Then you'd do well to check this one out because it's straight up Twin Peaks action...
A surreal fairy tale that coils in on itself like a slow-motion whirlpool and achieves an atmosphere of sublime creepiness without ever precisely making sense.
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