Spiral

Year: 2000

Grade: C+

Country: Japan

Director: Higuchinsky

Review

japanese horror film that reminded me of a cross between pi and ringu. it’s about a town that is overcome by ‘uzumaki’ (japanese for “spiral”)…it’s sort of a nebulous problem that never gets defined, but people start becoming obsessed with all things sprial – from fingerprints to snails. in this respect it reminded me of close encounters of the third kind. at any rate, the shit starts to hit the fan and people are going crazy and the town starts getting really weird and people start turning into snails and none of it is ever explained at all. so the story was intriguing, but a bit of a let down by the end, however the style won the film some points. the director did some interesting things with editing, digital effects and mise en scene which made the film edgy and scary, at times. overall i could tell that the director had some good ideas, but the writing could have used some work.