Junji Ito is one of the most unclassifiable talents in current horror manga. Like the great literary masters of the genre (from which he draws tirelessly: for example, Lovecraft is one of his great influences) his talent spreads both in long stories and in short stories, vignettes of direct impact that, with their bodily mutations and their psyches that are falling into the abysses of dementialeave an indelible mark on the reader.
‘Uzumaki‘, his masterpiece, is a mix of both: a long story that is divided into more or less self-contained chapters (although there is a common thread for all of them) that tell how in a peaceful Japanese town, its inhabitants go crazy with the increasingly evident presence of spiral shapes: from more everyday ones such as the patterns of clouds or everyday objects to more terrifying presences, such as hair, insects or even the bodies of the friends and family of the protagonist.
Junji Ito has been brought to the screen on various occasions: there is an OVA of his ‘GYO’, as well as two anthologies of short stories, ‘Junji Ito Collection’ (which you have on Crunchyroll) and ‘Junji Ito Maniac’ (which Netflix recently released). There is also a Previous live-action adaptation of ‘Uzumaki’which takes its own visual path, different from the manga but equally magnificent. This new adaptation of the manga in animated format is the most faithful to dateand shines for its recreation of the obsessive atmosphere of the original.
It has taken ‘Uzumaki’ five years (which already you can see in Max) to reach the screens despite its brevity (only four twenty-minute episodes), and the care with which it has been executed is perceived in each of its shots. The spiral effects are especially careful, with a combination of 2D, 3D and rotoscopic effects that bring Junji Ito’s circular nightmares to life, in a moving replica of the unforgettable infernal images from the manga.
Everything in ‘Uzumaki’ is taken care of down to the smallest detail. For example, the soundtrack is by Colin Stetson, one of the great shapers of the sound of modern horror, as he has participated in films such as the already fundamental ‘Hereditary’ or another film that has a lot in common with this ‘Uzumaki’, ‘ Color Out of Space’. With the black and white as an expressive tool of unusual powerwe are facing one of the essential horror premieres of an October on the way to Halloween that promises to be full of surprises.
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