Adapted from a manga comic by Junju Ito, Uzumaki (which translates as "spiral") marks a solid feature-film debut for music-video director Higuchinsky. The sharp visual bias intrinsic to these influences--manga and music video--is in evidence throughout the film, as Higuchinsky regularly sacrifices the trademark of the horror film, plot-dependent suspense, in favor of further developing a frosty visual tone.

The success of Uzumaki as a horror movie depends largely upon whether you can imagine becoming obsessed by a visual pattern (much as the success of Pi as a thriller hinged upon your ability to sympathize with paranoia about a number). The film tells the story of high-school student Kirie (Eriko Hatsune) and the ancient curse that devastates her hometown of Kurozu-cho. Kirie first observes the effects of the curse when she attempts to greet her boyfriend's father, who is intently videotaping a snail. He ignores her, more interested in the uzumaki than in normal social interaction. Within a few short scenes, this obsession escalates until his pursuit of spirals--in food, barber-shop signs, even washing machines--has become more important to him than his own life. Other men affected by the curse are more passive, allowing the spiral to overtake their bodies as they morph into human snails.

The creepiest aspect of the film is the way the curse divides the town into those who want to be noticed and those who shun attention. The wacky mannerisms of a classmate are calculated to attract the gaze of her admirers; so when she realizes the boys are crazy about spirals, her hairstyle undergoes a fantastic alteration. But the widow of a man who was driven to suicide by his obsession reviles the spiral in all its manifestations: In order to hide herself from the curse, she snips off the whorls in her own fingerprints.

The flashy editing can be excessive at times, and the too-cute effect of swirling spirals through landscapes kept reminding me of my computer screensaver. Nonetheless, Uzumaki is a fresh take on a tired genre, and its pleasures outweigh its limitations by half.