The manga "Uzumaki," written and illustrated by Japanese author Junji Ito is something I've read in full only recently and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's not perfect but it is effective, extremely tense and it is one unsettling, creepy, sometimes terrifying experiment. In 2000, the manga has been adapted for cinema and I decided to watch the adaptation to see how it turned out. After finishing it, I honestly thought and felt that it is probably one of the worst movies I've seen in my entire life.
My issue with the movie is not even with how it adapts the source material. Sure, the plot only focuses on the manga's first two chapters and spends a lot of time referencing other chapters without really exploring much about them but it still is somewhat faithful. I believe that a TV series would have been more appropriate but overall, the movie does a decent job. A movie adaptation doesn't have to follow word for word its source material to be good and it could work doing its own thing.
However in that case, the movie also fails being its own thing. There is so much about its presentation that just doesn't work. First off, the movie is nothing particular with its cinematography and it sometimes feels very clunky and awkward: there are many shots that are focusing on a character's face and the camera is way too close.
The sound and special effects feel cheap and are ridiculous: there is a scene where a student just unlits a cigarette on a door and they added some explosion effect you'd find in a random low budget YouTube video. Most of those effects are making the movie unintentionally hilarious to watch.
The acting is mid with Fhi Fan, playing Shuichi being particularly bad. The film's tone is very inconsistent: it doesn't know how to be a horror film, how not to appear funny nor realise how much it fails with serious moments. The score and editing certainly did not help: the score is cheesy and very forced while the editing was simply an abomination. So many awful transition techniques and scenes faded into others were used. The editing is definitely the worst part of this movie.
This is already a really funny bad movie to watch sober but maybe the experiment would be greater being drunk. Unironically though, it is one of the worst, if not the worst movie I've seen.
My issue with the movie is not even with how it adapts the source material. Sure, the plot only focuses on the manga's first two chapters and spends a lot of time referencing other chapters without really exploring much about them but it still is somewhat faithful. I believe that a TV series would have been more appropriate but overall, the movie does a decent job. A movie adaptation doesn't have to follow word for word its source material to be good and it could work doing its own thing.
However in that case, the movie also fails being its own thing. There is so much about its presentation that just doesn't work. First off, the movie is nothing particular with its cinematography and it sometimes feels very clunky and awkward: there are many shots that are focusing on a character's face and the camera is way too close.
The sound and special effects feel cheap and are ridiculous: there is a scene where a student just unlits a cigarette on a door and they added some explosion effect you'd find in a random low budget YouTube video. Most of those effects are making the movie unintentionally hilarious to watch.
The acting is mid with Fhi Fan, playing Shuichi being particularly bad. The film's tone is very inconsistent: it doesn't know how to be a horror film, how not to appear funny nor realise how much it fails with serious moments. The score and editing certainly did not help: the score is cheesy and very forced while the editing was simply an abomination. So many awful transition techniques and scenes faded into others were used. The editing is definitely the worst part of this movie.
This is already a really funny bad movie to watch sober but maybe the experiment would be greater being drunk. Unironically though, it is one of the worst, if not the worst movie I've seen.
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