HORROR MONTH #25: Uzumaki, by Junji Ito (1998)

Type of Media: Manga

We like to think of the places we live as permanent. The nice little town you live in has always been a nice little town, and will continue to be a nice little town forever and ever. However, the reality is that areas go through cycles of prosperity and decline, with some places degrading so much they effectively cease to exist. These downward slants rarely seem fair. Cities and towns devastated by sudden natural disasters, industries drying up, strings of bad luck that stretch on for years. It's almost as if some places are just cursed.

Horror manga series Uzumaki focuses on Kurôzu-cho, a city in Japan that starts being plagued by spirals. It starts out with peculiarities in the environment, like long grass curling up and swirling cloud patterns, but it isn't long before the people of Kurôzu-cho are caught up as well. The families of high school couple Kirie and Shuichi are the first ones effected, as spirals warp the minds and bodies of their parents. Attempts to escape are unsuccessful as the town descends deeper into madness, until Kirie and Shuichi resolve to find the source of the spiral curse.

It's important to note that in Japan, the spiral is a symbol with normally positive connotations. Cartoon characters have spirals on their cheeks, food is marked with spirals, and spirals are common motifs in designs. Uzumaki, though, subverts that by giving the spiral the connotation of a vortex. Once you are caught in the spiral you cannot escape, it drags you to its center where only the void awaits.

The creator Junji Ito is considered a master of horror in Japan, and Uzumaki is a great demonstration as to why. His clean black and white art is surprisingly good at rendering the body horror that his stories often contain. He has a tendency to save his most graphic images for two-page splash panels, often placed after an innocuous image to shock the reader as they turn the page. Uzumaki also contains a lot of dark humor, like one story where a boy who likes to jump out and surprise people dies and comes back as a zombie with a spiral-shaped spinal cord, causing him to bounce around like a jack-in-the-box.

If you're a fan of H.P. Lovecraft or David Cronenberg, Uzumaki is an easy recommendation with its combination of cosmic and body horror. It also works if you're looking for something scary that's visual, but less intense than a horror movie.