Year: 2000
Plot: "In a small town in Japan, Kirie comes upon her boyfriend's father silently videotaping a snail. He seems unaware of her presence and she thinks no more of it. Later, the mans obsession with spirals becomes more and more bizarre, ending in his suicide in a washing machine which turn his body into a spiral. Soon other inhabitants become possessed with different forms of spirals, one student seems to be mutating into a snail, an other's hair becomes strangely medusa-like. The entire town becomes possessed."
I am not sure exactly why I liked this one so much. This is a live action of a Manga of the same name, though I have never read the manga. I am thinking that I might just have to after seeing this movie.
Now this is marked as being horror and comedy, but I guess I missed the comedy parts. Sure, some of the stuff in the movie was a little ridiculous, but I didn't really see where the comedy came in. The horror part was rather evident. Not really in a scary sense, though it did get a jump out of me a few times.
It was more of the fact that with everything going on, there was little the main characters could do to stop it. You don't even know for sure if they could have escaped if they had known in time. Now that isn't a spoiler, because I am not going to tell you who or if any survives. I just mean that the characters might have been able to escape all they witnessed if they left the town. They may not have been able to though.
This movie also had its sweet parts. I have to say that one of my favorite parts was the scene at Dragonfly Pond. It is such a sweet scene, but I guess it is more of a bittersweet. I won't tell why I feel this way, but one of the reasons definitely has to do with all they see. To have such a sweet scene amongst all the death and craziness, is definitely bittersweet in and of itself.
I also want to mention that if you pay close attention throughout the movie, you will notice subtle spirals. These can be seen swirling about the backgrounds of various scenes. This is one movie that is interesting to pay attention to.
I suggest watching this movie. It is definitely an interesting one. I am not sure how good it is to those that have read the manga, but I do know that it was a good movie to me, having never read the mange. n.n
