Uzumaki: Final Girl Film Club post

Movie #2 in my foray into Final Girl’s Film Club – Uzumaki

Recently challenged to explain my personal attraction to the horror genre, I found myself easily explaining the ins and outs of what I love…and then just a few days later, with the bucketloads of recent crap-slasher-horror flicks running through my head, I started to question this stance. Do I really want to spend *more* time reading, watching, and writing in this world of predominantly piss-poor productions?

And yet…

When watching a film like Uzumaki (originally a Magna graphic novel titled The Spiral, or Vortex), it became easy to move past the weaker elements to revel in the wildly outrageous bits. To be fair, there were plenty of things to dislike. The film style was essentially…um…film school? As in, almost every sequence had multiple types of film-play that resulted in a jarring, frustrating viewing experience whereas stylistic stability would have lent panache and avoided the rather schizophrenic result. Additionally, the adherence to the chapter structure of the graphic novel felt distracting and unnecessary while the casting of the heroine Goshima’s boyfriend lent a strange aura to his character that didn’t click until later research revealed that he is a Japanese model (too tall, too pretty, not a great actor).

All that said, Eriko Hatsune as Goshima did an excellent job with her emotional arc and the moments where she tries to explain how she must learn how to support the boy/friend who had continually stood by her (as his father goes mad with Uzumaki and self-destructs by stuffing himself into a washing machine – and this is nothing compared to the contortions the other victims go through) are actually rather touching. The most unique element to this film is that it felt as though the directorial choices were an homage to standard American horror gimmicks. The undercurrent of humor crossed with gore, along with the specific Japanese cultural twists, became quite endearing – as though one could turn off the subtitles and let the tone conduct the translation.

And oh, the SNAILS...giant snail-people sliding up the outside of the school!



Posted as party of the Final Girl Film Club
February, 2010