twist of fait accomplis

Uzumaki, 2000 [ ADD ]
Director: Higuchinsky
Availability: Hard (available on Region 3 DVD via Diabolik DVD)

Inhabitants of a waterfront Japenese town are slowly become obsessed with uzumaki (spirals). They seek to find spirals in every day life, to collect spirals, and eventually, as they're driven to madness, to become spirals. How does one become a spiral, one might ask?

Put yourself in an industrial washing machine and turn it on.

This movie is every bit as bizarre as its plot. God bless the Japanese for their insane take on the horror film. Where else could you expect to find human-sized snails crawling up a skyscraper? Only in a film version of a Japanese comic book, directed by a Japanese music video director.

I risk sounding like a fourth grade book report for a book I've never read, but the only way to describe Uzumaki is with words like "great," "strange," "transcendent," and "the ultimate kick-in-the-head."