The Japanese horror film Uzumaki will make your head spin … but not necessarily in a good way. The crazy shit all starts when schoolgirl Kirie Goshima (Eriko Hatsune) notices her boyfriend Shuichi’s father being mesmerized by a snail shell, then a pottery wheel — anything containing a spiral, which he captures obsessively with a camcorder.
The old man’s madness soon results in his suicide, at which point it spreads to the immediate populace via a spiraling plume of smoke. Soon, everyone in that vortex shape — hair curls, an inner-ear part, a millipede — sends everyone to Loopyville. As They Might Be Giants once sang, “The spiraling shape will make you go insane / Everyone wants to see that groovy thing.”
You’re better off with the TMBG tune or Junji Ito’s terrific three-volume manga on which this flick is based. Whereas the books move quickly, page by page, the movie shambles about at a pace of one of its supporting characters: the one who shows up at school shuffling along with a prodigious slime trail behind him.
Director Higuchinsky — yes, just the one name — succeeds in presenting the tale with some interesting angles and inventive setups, and does not skimp on gore when it’s called for. The apocalyptic end scene, however, looks drawn, demonstrating the limitations of the budget. It’s a semi-solid try, but with such rich material to draw from, could be far creepier and far better. —Rod Lott
How bad is 
Then lots of weird things appear in the school halls: head-smothering condoms, neck-strangling plants,a preppy zombie, a horny gargoyle, a mummy, a creature in red sneakers. It ends with the students squaring off against Mr. Armageddon at a climactic basketball match. Apparently, this plot is so complex that every scene requires narration. 
Despite this and numerous other warnings to get out of the town before it traps him, Whitmore sticks around. I’m guessing part of this is because Roth’s assistant, Genevieve (Paola Rinaldi), likes to undress in front of an open window. That may give you reason to stick around, too, as will the string of strange murders and increasingly bizarre proceedings that, at the very end, jump from aping the stylistic methods of Dario Argento to David Cronenberg.
From the same creative team that brought you 
Director Andrzej Bartkowiak certainly has an unapologetically commercial style that’s high on gloss and short on everything else, but there’s something about it I like. Although it’s far from brilliant, it’s also far from incompetent. I’m just not sure why every movie he does has to star DMX and Anthony Anderson (a little of whose ad-libbed shtick goes a long way). Also starring in this outing are Tom Arnold (some of whose scenes with Seagal seem filmed without Seagal even there), Isaiah Washington and, all too briefly, Eva Mendes. —Rod Lott