As sort of a follow up to my short “review” of the Uzumaki manga, I decided that I would watch the movie. And watch I did. Last night. And much to my dismay, it really wasn’t very good. So even though it’s Tuesday and I’m supposed to be reviewing a video game, I’mma go ahead and tell you about this flop.
The main issue here is that they had to cram a story that spanned three books into two hours, and I suppose they did an okay job with that, but it could have been so much better. There were a lot of chapters in the books that were simply side-stories that really had no place in the movie. Particularly that of Kirie’s stalker and the girl with the spiraly hair. Hell, they weren’t even complete here. At the end of the movie, they show some stills of people affected by the uzumaki, and one is of the chick with the hair, her curls wrapped around a telephone pole, and her body completely emaciated. If you hadn’t read the manga prior to this, you would have no idea what was going on. Would you have guessed that the ever-growing hair spirals were draining her of her life? Probably not, as it wasn’t even remotely touched on.
The main story was even cut in half and slightly butchered in the process. Everything was going fine in the beginning; Shuichi’s father obsessed with the uzumaki, the spiral smoke from the crematorium chimney, his mother going insane. It was all good until the end when (and I’ll spoil the movie here because the book is way better) Shuichi was caught by the spiral and turned into a monster. Manga Shuichi would never have given into the spiral, much much less attack Kirie. Or does that give away too much? Well, in any case, I undersand that they had to take a few liberties to turn it into a movie, but it just hurts so much. The quote on the cover calls Uzumaki “deliriously unsettling”, which is true, but the creepiness is about the only thing left intact from the source material.
Which brings me to what I did like about the film version. for one, like I said, it was still really creepy. I’m almost afraid to turn around in fear that some kind of horrible spirally fate is waiting just behind me. A good part of the gore and shocking visuals remain off-camera (or come on for only a split-second), but the screams and the sounds of bones cracking and bodies contorting in ways they were never meant to are more then enough to get the message of terror across. Also, for the very brief few seconds that we get to see the giant man-snails, they look really cool. Besides the fact that they’re irrelevant to the main plot, I kinda wish they’d gotten more screen time. Oh well.
In conclusion, I really haven’t changed my mind between now and four paragraphs ago. It’s not a great movie, and I’m pretty sure that anyone who has not read through at least the first book will be utterly confused by what exactly is going on. It’s frightening and will most likely give you the jibblies, but I think that in the end, the common man would come away from it more confused than scared. Not a big recommendation on this one unless you’re absolutely crazy about the manga and must have everything asociated with it. In which case, I might warn you against obsessions like that… unless you want to end up coiled in a laundry machine.