Uzumaki

is a 2000 Japanese supernatural horror film based on the manga of the same name by Junji Ito. The feature film directorial debut of Higuchinsky, it stars Eriko Hatsune, Fhi Fan, Hinako Saeki and Shin Eun-kyung. The film takes place in a town plagued by a mysterious curse involving spirals. As the film was produced while the manga was still being written and released, it departs from the story of the original work and features a different ending. The film was backed by the company Omega Micott, who released it in Japan on a double bill with Tomie: Replay, another film based on a manga by Ito. Simultaneously, Uzumaki received a limited release in the American city of San Francisco. It received mixed reviews from critics. Plot High school student Kirie Goshima's first glimpse that something is awry in the small town of Kurouzu-cho comes when her boyfriend Shuichi Saito's father begins to film the corkscrew patterns on a snail; he is also in the process of making a video scrap book filled with the images of anything that has a spiral or vortex shape to it. His unusual obsession causes him to abandon his responsibilities at work; he proclaims that a spiral is the highest form of art, and frantically creates whirlpools in his miso soup when he runs out of spiral-patterned kamaboko. He then decides to film himself crawling into a washing machine, where he dies. It is not long before the entire town is infected by the otherworldly spirals. Tamura, a reporter, is intrigued by Shuichi's father's suicide and becomes obsessed with the case. Meanwhile, Shuichi's mother, who has been in hospital since her husband's death, has developed a severe phobia of spirals. She cuts off her hair and fingertips due to their spiral-like shapes, and Shuichi tells the hospital staff to eliminate anything spiral-shaped so his mother may not encounter them. One night, after a millipede tries to crawl into her ear while she is asleep, Shuichi's mother, the centipede claims to be her husband and turns into a spiral, driving her to commit suicide.