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Spiraling into Apocalypse 155

conceited ‘popular’ girl, finds herself bedecked with monstrously long
curly black hair that inevitably leads to her grotesque demise when these
otherworldly tresses wrap themselves around a power line, reducing her
to a withered, smoking husk. When Tamura, an investigator who claims
to have discovered some vital clues as to the vortexes’ origins, dies before
he can tell Shiuchi what he has learned, Shuichi finally convinces Kirie
that it is time to leave town. However, before they can depart, Shuichi
becomes possessed by the vortex. His body uncontrollably coiling from
ankle to neck, an image accompanied by sharp snapping sounds, he
implores Kirie to join him in the vortex: ‘Be a vortex, too,’ he urges, his
eyes two dead grey swirls. Kirie refuses, and the film closes with a series
of still shots (some of them paintings) of the town’s numerous victims,
over which Kirie declares that what we have just witnessed is ‘something
that happened in her home town.’
Like Kurouzu Town itself, Higuchinsky’s Uzumaki is in many
ways a structure haunted both explicitly and implicitly by vortexes. Even
a cursory sampling of spiral imagery in Uzumaki’s diegesis reveals the
depth and scope of the shape’s copious manifestations. Vortexes are
located on fingertips, snail shells, mounds of clay rotating upon a
spinning pottery wheel, a twirling police officer’s baton, the interior of a
gun barrel, the helical curves of a spiral staircase, and the spinning of a
rotary phone’s dial, posters depicting everything from galaxies to cross-
sections of the human body. Higuchinsky’s intentionally eclectic visual
style further inundates viewers with a dizzying array of technical
manipulations and skilful editing. For example, in the film’s 88 minute
running time, Higuchinsky employs: fast motion and reverse motion
photography; dissolves and double-exposures; fades to black, white and
red; tracking shots; cross-cuts, flash-cuts and jump-cuts; wipes; long
takes; POV shots; and hand-held photography. When one factors in
Higuchinsky’s use of split screen photography, as well as the film’s
numerous instances of digital manipulation, varying focal lengths,
chiaroscuro and low key lighting, and the application of exaggerated
sound effects, particularly during the work’s ghastlier moments,
Uzumaki’s unique aesthetic constitutes a kind of visual hyperactivity. As
a result, the spectator is never allowed to slip into an optical or