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Uzumaki · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film is Lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. I've come to love that pattern. I'm collecting everything that has spirals. It's Uzumaki and this film is lit. Foreign. Welcome back to this Film is Lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books or in this case based on series of manga. So we have every segment except for we do not have a guess who this week because it is a manga. It's drawings. I mean, I guess I could show you the pictures and have you guessed who you thought those people were? The drawings of Shuchi, who, however you say his name, are interesting and fun, but overall we're not gonna do that. We do have every other segment. We're gonna jump right in. If you have not read or watched Uzumaki, we're gonna give you a brief summary of the 2000 film. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up real quick before we give the summary. And just a reminder, this is for the 2000 live action film. There is also a very recent like 2025, 2024 Netflix animated series based on this. That is not what we're talking about. We are talk live action film. So with that, Katie, take it away.
• 2:00
  Speaker B: Okay, I'm really gonna do my best here.
• 2:02
  Speaker A: Oh yeah, there's some Japanese names in there. Good luck.
• 2:04
  Speaker B: High school student Kiri Goshima's first glimpse that something is awry in the small town of Kuruzu Cho comes when her boyfriend Suchi Sato's father begins to film the corkscrew patterns on a snail. He is also in the process of making a video scrapbook filled with the images of anything that has a spiral or vortex shape to his unusual obsession causes him to abandon his responsibilities at work. He proclaims that a spiral is the highest form of art and frantically creates whirlpools in his miso soup when he runs out of spiral patterned kamaboko. He then decides to film himself crawling into a washing machine where he dies. Also, I'm pretty sure this Wikipedia summary is like.
• 2:56
  Speaker A: It's a little.
• 2:57
  Speaker B: A little out of order.
• 2:57
  Speaker A: Out of order. They kind of rearrange things, I think, to fit the narrative as they saw fit. And there's also some other little things that are. But it's. It's as Wikipedia summaries often are. Yeah, it's not exactly spot on.
• 3:10
  Speaker B: It is not long before the entire town is infected by the otherworldly spirals. Timura, a reporter, is intrigued by Tsuchi's father's suicide and becomes obsessed with the case. Meanwhile, Tsuchi's mother, who has been in hospital since her husband's death, has developed a severe phobia of spirals. She cuts off her hair and fingertips due to their spiral like shapes, and Tsuchi tells the hospital staff to eliminate anything spiral shaped so his mother may not encounter them. One night, after a millipede tries to crawl into her ear while she is asleep, the millipede claims to be her husband and turns into a spiral, driving her to commit suicide. Meanwhile, at Kiri's high school, a student named Katayama begins to walk at a snail's pace, dripping in a slimy substance distance and only attending school on rainy days. He and other members of the student body gradually begin to sprout shells, drink water in copious amounts and crawl. On the walls of the school, Kiri's classmate Sakino begins to grow her hair in exaggerated curls, taking over her mind and the minds of other female students whirl like clouds appear in the sky. And during funerals, they are accompanied by smoky ghost like faces of victims who perished in spiral. Related eventually, the entire town succumbs to the curse of the spiral. Kiri's father takes a drill to his eye after obsessively creating spiral shaped ceramics. A news crew reporting on the phenomenon lose themselves in a tunnel, only to be later found as humanoid yet snail like corpses. And Sakino's snake like curls grow to an abnormal height, wrapping around a telephone pole and cables, electrocuting herself. A boy named Mitsuru, who is obsessed with Kiri, throws himself in front of Inspector Tamura's car and is twisted around the axle. The car collides with a pole, causing Tamura's head to hit the windshield, leaving a spiral shaped crack. When Kiri and Tsuchi decide to search for Kiri's father, Tsuchi's body twists into a spiral like contortion. He crawls towards Kiri, asking her to become a spiral too, refusing to Let Tsuchi back to his side. Kiri flees and her fate is left unknown.
• 5:36
  Speaker A: All right, that is a summary of the film, more or less. Now, Katie has a lot of questions and we're gonna find out. Was that in the book? Gaston, may I have my book, please? How can you read this?
• 5:51
  Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination. So one of the first kind of weird off things that we see happen in this mov is Kiri is on her way to school and she encounters this guy, we don't know who he is yet, who's filming a snail and cannot be torn away from it. Does that happen in the book?
• 6:18
  Speaker A: Yes. So that is one of the first strange moments of the book. In fact, the book and the movie start basically shot for shot, identical, with Kiri staring out over the. It's like the first shot of the movie is the first shot of the book. Then realizing that she's late, running late for something, like she checks her watch and she goes running down the path. And there's a. Like a wind, like a whirlwind. In the book, it's like a straight up, like little dust devil that kind of like swirls up behind her. But in the movie it's just like a wind blows behind her. And then as she gets into town, she does stumble across Shayuchi's. I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce his name. Father. In an alleyway, staring at a snail. The only real difference is that he's not filming in the book. He's just staring at it. But other than that, it is exactly the same.
• 7:05
  Speaker B: So then we meet Seiuchi or Tsuchi.
• 7:09
  Speaker A: I think it's Shuichi or Shuichi. Maybe they pronounce it different. There's the actual Japanese way to pronounce it. I don't know, but I read it. Shuichi. Shuichi. Shu. Chi. I don't know.
• 7:20
  Speaker B: Tsuchi. And he and Kiri are like childhood friends. They're good friends. But during this initial scene where we're talking to him, he asks Kiri to elope with him. Kind of out of nowhere. Does he do that in the book?
• 7:37
  Speaker A: So not specifically elope, but she is going to meet up with him in the book at the very beginning. And they are talking and he does ask her to leave town with him. He says we should get out of here. We should run away from this town. Because he has a weird feeling about this town. It's cursed and he doesn't want to be there anymore. There's no mention in the book Specifically of them eloping, like to get married or anything like that. But it is. Yes, he does want them to run away. He's like, we should leave.
• 8:05
  Speaker B: Is Kiri's dad, like a master potter?
• 8:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. When we're introduced to her father. That is his profession. He is. And it's very, very similar. He spends all his time making pottery and that's. Yep, that's his profession.
• 8:22
  Speaker B: Is there anything similar to the scene where Kiri is looking through her childhood photos? So we see her do this pretty early in the movie. We get a little backstory about how her mom died. And that's when we found out that her and Tsuchi are childhood friends.
• 8:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. No. So I thought this was a fine addition. This is not in the book at all. Cause it does showcase a bit more of her and Shuichi's relationship in particular. The thing I liked about this, in the film, this little flashback segment. It's like a flashback montage of photographs from their childhood as well as. And this may be a different moment. We also see a flashback to a little scene from their childhood also in the book. And I think I have this mentioned somewhere else. Her mom's alive still in the book. She has not passed away. Doesn't really factor in. In the movie story. It doesn't factor in at all. It would factor in if they had expanded more of some of the stuff from the book. It might factor in a little bit. But the way they edited the story for the movie, her being there or not is not super relevant. She doesn't have much of a role until much later in the book. Which doesn't make it into the film. More about that later. But point being, one of the things I did like about this scene, apart from showing us a little backstory of their relationship. Also, I think it's implied in the book that they may be childhood friends, I think. But they definitely. She said he went to a different school and then transferred to her high school recently. But I do think they are childhood friends. Anyways, I like seeing the spiral imagery in the flashbacks. We see like. I can't remember all of them, but one of them, he offers like an ice cream cone that has like. It's like soft serve, so it looks like a spiral. And there was at least one other thing they might be playing on like a merry go round at some point. There was like two or three little details that were like spiral things. And I liked the idea that imagery in the photos from their childhood alluding to the fact that the town slash. They have kind of Always had this specter of the spirals hanging over them. That doesn't really make sense in the movie story as it's told or. Not that it doesn't make sense. It doesn't really ever get fleshed out in the story that the movie tells. But in the book, by the end, it becomes very clear that this is like much like a spiral, it's like a cyclical thing. And that this, this town in particular, for what we don't get a lot of the lore backstory, we get a little bit. But this town has always had this spiral curse thing association over it. And so I liked that idea of seeing it in their childhood, which we don't really get anything like that in the book.
• 10:53
  Speaker B: So then we see Kyrie at school. And one thing that happens in this scene is that there's this really tall like spiral staircase in their school. And this guy falls out of nowhere. Just falls? Yeah, out of nowhere. Just falls. And it's not anybody that we know. He falls or maybe jumped. I'll explain down the center of this spiral staircase. And we get kind of a cool like top down shot of him on the floor and then the stairs spiraling up and all of the students looking down at various points on the stairs. And I thought maybe that would be like a shot recreated from the manga. So is it?
• 11:43
  Speaker A: So that event does happen. It happens later in the book. It's at a later chapter. I was trying to find it real quick. It doesn't really matter, but it does happen. It's not in the middle of a spiral staircase. Go. That's the big difference in the book. He falls off the roof of the school building while doing acrobatics on a railing on the roof, trying to show off. The movie does mention this briefly in the scene right after that we hear like overhear a conversation or something where somebody says like, oh, he was trying to show off doing something and he fell. And so that's what happens. That ties into another chapter later, the hair chapter. We'll get to. I'll explain more about that when you get to that question later. That all plays out a little bit differently and it ties into the fact that, yeah, he was trying to show off and he fell and died. And that's one of the people who dies. But yeah, I liked the visual of it. It is a similar shot panel in the book where they show his body on the ground. It is a top down shot with a circle of kids staring at him. It's just not in the middle of a spiral staircase. But I thought that was a good, clever idea. And it works with what they're doing and totally works with that specific plot point.
• 12:55
  Speaker B: So he did just fall?
• 12:57
  Speaker A: Yes, he accidentally fell. That is, he is trying to show off, and he just slipped and fell and died.
• 13:04
  Speaker B: Because when we were watching the movie, Ike had kind of interpreted that as like, maybe he didn't fall. But that's something that maybe we were gonna find out more about later.
• 13:15
  Speaker A: But then the movie never goes back to it again. It makes more sense in the context of the chapter in the book, which I'll talk about here in a little bit.
• 13:21
  Speaker B: Okay. Character. We. So then we meet another character at her school. And I really loved this character's introduction in the movie. I called her Cigarette Fancy Glasses Girl because she, like, she comes banging out of one of the bathroom stalls and she's got glasses with, like a fancy chain on them, and she's smoking a cigarette. And then she puts her cigarette out on the wall of the bathroom and there's a dramatic music sting when she does this. And. And it's great. Is she in the book?
• 14:01
  Speaker A: Yes. So that character is in the book. But unfortunately everything from that scene is not in the book, or fortunately, however you want to put it. But yeah, that would. That her introduction is. Is. Is not remotely as cool in the book. She's just introduced as another girl in the school, and she does not have the glasses. She is never smoking a cigarette or doesn't smoke. That we see. She also isn't nearly have as much personality as that character does in that moment. She's just a girl who ends up getting jealous of Kiri. And again, more on that chapter here briefly, when you get to your next question about the hair stuff. But yeah, I really like this moment in the movie. And it is not. Again, the character's in the book, but she's not nearly as interesting as she is in the movie. Although the rest of that chapter is way more interesting in the book than it is in the movie because it's just kind of like immediately brushed aside. And then we see her again at
• 14:58
  Speaker B: the very end, something that I wasn't really expecting. Suichi outright tells Kiri that he thinks the town is cursed by the Uzumaki, by spirals. And I did not see that coming. That they would have a character just outright be like, yeah, I think it's a spiral curse.
• 15:19
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. So that's. Shu Chi's a really interesting character in the book. And immediately from moment one, like the scene in the book, in the movie, where they first talk and he's like, we should get out of here. He says this town is cursed by spirals. And he starts talking about how his dad is obsessed with them. And he's like this very dark, brooding character. The whole. Which he is in the movie too. But that comes directly from the book every time you see him. It's very funny. He's having the worst time all the time. I say it's funny, but in kind of an ironic way. He's having like the worst time. And he always just looks miserable. And he's always drawn with like bags around his eyes and like a thousand yard stare. And just like he's the only one who seems to like have been aware that shit was off like the whole time. And even once stuff starts really going wrong, the rest of the town is not like really figuring out like something is really off here. And he is like, yeah, this. He becomes like very nihilistic. And like, we're fucked. Like this town is cursed. We can now we can't leave and we're just. We're stuck here and we're stuck with the spiral. But yeah, no, that exact thing does happen 100%.
• 16:28
  Speaker B: Another cool shot in the movie that I thought might be taken directly from the book. There's a shot of Suchi's dad sitting like in a room in their house and he has completely filled it with stuff that has spirals on it. So he's just sitting in this room surrounded by spiral. Completely surrounded by spirals, yes.
• 16:51
  Speaker A: That is an almost identical recreation of a panel from the book. Like identical.
• 16:57
  Speaker B: Cool.
• 16:57
  Speaker A: So yeah, that is one of the things the movie does a lot and tries to do a lot at some time to more or less success at different times is capture exact panels kind of as faithfully as possible. And yeah, that is one where he has a room that is just completely covered in spirals and spiral stuff.
• 17:16
  Speaker B: This is a random question. There was like a recurring bit in this movie. I say recurring bit. It happens like twice. At the time that I wrote this question, I thought maybe it would happen more and they would like carry it more through the movie. But there's like a recurring bit where the town police officer maybe gets mad at Tsuchi and Kiri because they're both riding on his bike and that's apparently illegal to ride two on a bike.
• 17:49
  Speaker A: No, this isn't from the book at all. And there's not really any allusions to stuff like that in the book of like there being like any strict. There's one thing that I'll have a note about later that I want to talk about that. I mainly want to ask if other people. I'll just say it now because I don't remember where I put it or if I put it in here and I might forget about it. But there's one other thing where there is this. Every night at 5:00pm, I think at 5:00pm, before anything is even happening, these sirens go off, which we see that in the movie, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I have it in the movie. Nailed it. But that is in the book and it is never explained. Cause that's before anything else starts happening. And it's never explained what that is. And I was wondering if it's like some sort of. Obviously it might be some cultural thing I'm unaware of, but I was wondering if it was maybe some sort of like curfew or something. But when it happens in the book or in the movie, we see Kiri still out after it happens. That's like. We hear it and then she goes and buys the fruit at that stall.
• 18:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:47
  Speaker A: So I don't. I don't know if it's like a curfew thing or if it's like a storm thing because there's later, there's. They have warning systems for when there's like storms coming in. But that's not what this is. This goes off every day at five and they never explain what it is. And I'm not exactly sure if somebody else knows what that is or what it's supposed to be or what's going on there. But that was. That's the only other element that feels like a thing that is like a. Like a. Like an authoritarian or like alluding to any sort of like. Yeah, you know, authoritarian type of streak within the town that she lives in. Again, but it's. But it's never. There's no repercussions for it. We don't ever see what it's doing or like what it's meant. They never say what it's supposed to be like, oh, that signals this. Or whatever. I don't. I don't know.
• 19:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:32
  Speaker A: So. Yeah, anyways. But no, nothing with the police officer bit is from the book.
• 19:38
  Speaker B: So maybe the creepiest thing, in my opinion in this movie is the scene where Suici's dad starts rolling his eyes. Which doesn't sound creepy. Just saying it. Yeah, but trust, it was pretty creepy.
• 19:59
  Speaker A: It is pretty creepy.
• 20:00
  Speaker B: Is that from the book?
• 20:01
  Speaker A: It is. That exact thing happens in the book. It's basically identical. He gets mad at Shu Chi's mom for throwing out his Uzumaki collection. But then he's like, it's fine though, because I finally realized that you can express the spiral through your own body. And then, yeah, he spins. He starts spinning his eyes like opposite spirally directions. And it's very creepy. He does it actually twice in the book because this time he's doing it to Kiri. But the earlier he did it to his family. But yeah, it happens a couple times.
• 20:33
  Speaker B: Another thing that's happening in this town is that some of the students at Kiri's school appear to be transforming into snails. Yeah, so there's. There's a. There's a specific scene with a kid who comes to class late and he's like all gooey and moving slow. And then he falls down and we see like the shape of a snail shell starting to come through his back. And then later on there are more giant humanoid snails. This is almost like a Lost in adaptation. Yeah, because the movie doesn't do a lot of expanding on it.
• 21:11
  Speaker A: But no, in the movie we see the scene where he starts turning into a snail, then we never see him again. We see another kid start like being really thirsty and then we never get more about that. And then at the end we get a news report of there being giant snails crawling on the school. Yeah, and that's like. And then we also get the post ending little scene, which I'll talk more about those later, where we see the news crew has apparently starting to turn into snails or whatever as they were trying to leave town. Yes, the slow, slimy kid slowly opening the door to the classroom as he's all wet. In the book it says he's wet. The movie they make him like slimy. Is identical to the panels in the book with him slowly opening the door. And that's kind of how that character is introduced. And they're talking about how he's very slow and he only comes to school on days when it rains and stuff like that. This whole vignette is way better in the book. So the way this book is broken up and I've kind of alluded to it so far, is that each chapter is like its own little individual kind of story of like a different way the spiral is manifesting or like affecting people or something else is happening. And this one, I think it might be called Snails, I can't remember. But it is about this kid turning into a snail. It's way more interesting in the book, as we mentioned in the movie. Just kind of like Happens. And we don't see much else with it. In fact, we don't even see him fully as a snail other than the news footage of them on the side of the building at the end. In the book, he slowly turns into a snail. Over the course of a couple weeks as he's coming to class, he gets more and more snail like, and then eventually he just fully becomes a snail. And the school ends up putting him in an enclosure, like on campus. Because they call his parents and they're like, hey, we got an issue. Your kid turned into a snail. Within the universe of this book, there's this weird kind of acceptance that, like, they just kind of deal with this stuff. They're not like, oh, my God. It's hard to explain, but it makes sense when you're reading it that they just kind of deal with it this way. But they call his parents and his parents, like, refuse to accept that. They're like, he's crawling. We actually. The shot at the news footage where we see the snail crawling on the outside of the building is basically identical to a shot where we see him crawling on the outside of the building. They call his parents. His parents show up and they're like, that's your son. And they're like, no, what are you talking about? Our son's not a giant snail. And they're like, and we're not taking him. They refuse to take him. And so the school puts him in this enclosure. Then his bully, the guy that we see in the movie who was like, picking on him, and we also see him drinking water later, he eventually starts turning into a snail in this chapter, and he eventually fully turns into a snail. And then they put him in the enclosure too. And then they fall in love and mate and escape their cage together into the woods. This was one of my favorite chapters because I was like, hey, this feels like it's actually saying something. He turns into a snail and they fall in love and they start mating and they escape their enclosure and disappear. And then the students and the teacher who we see in the movie as well, go into the woods to start looking for them to, like, try to find these two snails. They find eggs. They find a bat, like a clutch of, like, snail eggs. And they're like, oh, my God, they're laying eggs. And they explain that they're like, but they're both males. And they're like, well, it's because snails are hermaphrodite. Whatever. I don't know. They say some maybe made up sign. I don't. Whatever. And the teacher then is like, well, this is an abomination. And he calls it. He starts, like, stomping and destroying all the eggs. He's like, they're disgusting. This is unnatural. And these kind of creatures shouldn't breed or something like that. And I was like, okay, there might be a little commentary here. Cause we genuinely get a bully picking on a kid. Turns out they end up being together.
• 25:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:03
  Speaker A: And then. Yeah. And then running away together. And then the teacher being kind of enforcing. Whatever. And then the teacher eventually becomes a snail. And that's kind of how the chapter, like, he turns into a snail. And again, that's all. I thought that was all really interesting in the book. And it's kind of like one of the first chapters that doesn't feel solely like this is just creepy, weird stuff happening to be creepy and weird. And more like maybe we're trying to say a little bit something with this.
• 25:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:29
  Speaker A: Again, I don't know for sure. I don't really know anything about Junji Ito, his politics, his. Anything like that. So I have no idea. It might genuinely just be that he thought this was creepy and funny and weird and whatever. But it does feel. It reads to me like a little bit of social commentary.
• 25:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
• 25:47
  Speaker A: And I was so. I was disappointed that the movie left it as shortcut as, you know, shortchanged that as much as it did. And doesn't really give you any of that. It just gives, like the very first part where he starts turning into a snail. And then, like, later we're like, oh, he's a snail now. Okay, I guess. Sure. But, yeah, that stuff's all better in the book because I really like that chapter.
• 26:10
  Speaker B: Another thing that we see happen a couple times in the movie. The first time after Suichi's dad dies and they cremate him, and we see these spiral clouds in the sky or maybe the smoke from the crematorium.
• 26:31
  Speaker A: So spoilers. Yes, that's what it is.
• 26:34
  Speaker B: And it's a giant spiral. And then it spirals around and it snakes down into this pond. And his mom starts freaking out and screaming. And I was. I was kind of like. I actually feel like that's an appropriate response to that happening, but. Okay.
• 26:56
  Speaker A: Because we also see, like, faces.
• 26:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:58
  Speaker A: In the.
• 26:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. Can you expand on that a little bit?
• 27:05
  Speaker A: So I thought the shot of that shot of her looking up at the spiral in the sky with, like, the liquefy tool on her eyes and mouth that, like, was actually kind of creepy and shocking in the moment. We get kind of A jump cut, like, jump scare moment with it that I thought was kind of effective. But yes, this does all come from the book. Every time someone dies from the spirals in some way, Shuji's dad, later, his mom, the kid who. There's a girl who's not in this movie or in the movie, who has a scar on her head and I'll talk about it later. That turns into a spiral and consumes her. And at least one more. There's at least four of them, if not more, every time they cremate them because eventually they stop cremating them because this keeps happening, but they cremate them. And when this happens, the ashes, the smoke from the cremation forms this big spiral over the town and occasionally they see faces in it. And then it ends up getting sucked down into Dragonfly Pond. Which is all exactly what happens in the movie.
• 27:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:00
  Speaker A: Yes, that all exactly comes from the book.
• 28:02
  Speaker B: Okay. Something that I thought was interesting. In the second ish half of this movie, we get kind of this found footage element to it.
• 28:12
  Speaker A: And by the way, we will have more about why this stuff's going into the pond later.
• 28:18
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 28:18
  Speaker A: I have more explanation for that. None of that makes it into the movie.
• 28:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, it just goes into the pond and then that's.
• 28:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Which there's multiple facets to that and we'll talk about some of it, but, like, one of it is that Kiri's dad makes pottery out of it, but later.
• 28:34
  Speaker B: So second half of this film, there's introduces this kind of, like, found footage element because Sui Chi's dad has been filming spirals. And then when the reporter guy shows up, he takes the footage and is, like, reviewing it, looking for clues in this footage. And I was curious if there was anything similar to that in the book. I know you said that he didn't film in the book, but.
• 29:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, so. No, I thought this was a reasonable enough change that works well in the movie. It makes for some creepy, you know, found footage stuff especially. This is 2000.
• 29:08
  Speaker B: Yes, very popular.
• 29:10
  Speaker A: Well, and it's. I mean, yes, but it's like we're, you know, right after. I mean, whatchamacallit was only like 99. I think Blair Witch was.
• 29:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're right.
• 29:20
  Speaker A: Like 99.
• 29:20
  Speaker B: I mean, yeah, this was probably being made simultaneously.
• 29:24
  Speaker A: Roughly. Yeah, so this is right. It was probably right after. But this is right in the time where the very beginning of like. And I don't even think Belarwich was technically the first, but of when it became popular. And so, yeah, this is one of the earlier instances of it. And I thought it worked. I thought it's pretty effective because found footage, again, especially at a time when it wasn't played out. Even when it is played out, found footage still has a inherently kind of creepy aesthetic to it that I think just naturally is creepy. It done well. Kind of naturally.
• 29:54
  Speaker B: Naturally kind of unsettling.
• 29:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. Watching it's kind of voyeuristic and, like. And you have this very limited scope of what you can see even beyond a normal film. It's also usually lit poorly. And you also know there's gonna be something creepy in it because of the context of it being this foot, you know, blah, blah, blah that was found, like, related to his death or whatever. So, again, I think it's all very effective. None of it comes from the book. He doesn't have a camera or a camcorder or anything to film anything. So, yeah, there's no found footage element in the book.
• 30:22
  Speaker B: Suici's mom has not handled any of this well, as she shouldn't. So she's been in the hospital. And we see her. We see at one point that she has, like, cut off her fingerprints or maybe the tips of her fingers because she's realized that her fingerprints are a spiral pattern. Does she do that in the book?
• 30:50
  Speaker A: Yes, 100%. She also cuts off all her hair, which we do see in the film and they mentioned, because it can curl in those, like, spirals. Which is, I think, why in the film we see later in that one scene she has, like, the bandage on her. Yeah, the idea is that, yeah, she cut all her hair off as well. This, I will say, it's all way creepier and way grosserly. Way, way more grossly depicted in the book than it is in the movie. I was kind of disappointed in the movie. And I did wonder at times how much of this was, like, a ratings thing versus because, like, there are some pretty graphic, gory moments in the film of, like, when we see the one kid under the car and stuff. Like, there are some pretty graphic gore, but it's never, like, super. We don't spend a ton of time showing it actively happening. We usually see it after the fact. Whereas in the book there are moments where we see, like, when she cuts her fingerprints off. We get panel by panel moments of seeing her cutting and peeling her fingerprints off in a way that is very gross and disturbing. And it. I couldn't tell if the movie was intentionally not doing that for, like, ratings reasons or. Or, you know what I Mean, I. It was. Or just they decided it was too great. I don't know. I. I just. It was. It definitely loses some of its effect. This is one in particular where, like, Shuji comes into her. Her room one night and like, touches her hands and realizes they're bloody. And then looks. And we just kind of see her, like, bloody fingers with, like, the scissors next to it. And you're like, okay, it's a. You could. It's kind of gross, but it's not nearly as like, oh God. As like, the book is. And I think there's at least a medium somewhere between like, just kind of seeing it after the fact for showing, like, super excruciating detail of like, her peeling it off. Like, I think you could have done a little more to make it a little more effectively gross and creepy in the way that the book is, because I just don't think it quite gets there.
• 32:47
  Speaker B: So then we catch back up briefly with a cigarette, cool glasses girl who has.
• 32:55
  Speaker A: Her name's Zaki maybe.
• 32:56
  Speaker B: I can't remember when we see her at kind of like a midpoint, she has curled her hair into these big spiral shapes and she kind of looks like an anime character. And then later on we see that her hair has become these, like, massive, like floating spirals. Yeah, like gravity defying spirals. And the second one especially definitely looked like it could be an image from a manga. So I was wondering if that was from the book.
• 33:27
  Speaker A: So, yes, kind of again, and I mentioned this earlier, but this whole chapter is way more interesting in the book. This is all better in the book because in the book what happens is that first Kiri's hair starts growing into spirals and she initially starts to try to cut it off, but she can't. Like, if she has her barber or her person cutting her hair, try to cut it off and her hair starts attacking the barber.
• 33:52
  Speaker B: Interesting.
• 33:52
  Speaker A: And she's not able to straighten it. She's not able to do anything. And she doesn't want it to be, but it just starts happening. And then her classmate, this girl, becomes jealous of how much attention she's getting because of her super curly hair. And it does start. It escalates very similarly. Where initially Kiri's hair is like, in the gymnastics scene, how we see where it's just kind of like realistic looking, but like very like cartoony curly hair. Yeah, kind of cartoony, but they're hanging down normally or whatever. And that's kind of how it starts. And she starts getting all this attention for it. And this classmate Gets very jealous and she's like, well, I want to be looked at the same way she is. Blah blah blah. So her hair starts doing it. And we're never explicitly told in the book if this girl's doing something to make that happen or how she's making that happen because Kiri is. It's just happening and she doesn't want it to be happening. She is, is this is like a weird like curse from the curl thing or from the spiral thing. And I, I think you can assume something similar is happening with this other student, but that she somehow like invited it to happen in some way.
• 34:53
  Speaker B: Manifested.
• 34:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then it starts getting bigger and bigger and then eventually they literally have an anime hair battle.
• 35:01
  Speaker B: See, that's sick.
• 35:02
  Speaker A: It's incredible.
• 35:03
  Speaker B: Should have been in the movie.
• 35:04
  Speaker A: I assume that was not in the movie for budget region problems. I'm just like, we can't do that. But they literally have a giant floating curl hair anime battle in like the courtyard in front of all the students. And it's really the other girl attacking her. Kiri's not trying to attack her, but her hair is like fighting back without her really wanting to do anything. And then ultimately what happens is that Shu Chi is able to get in and save Kiri by managing during this fight. I don't remember exactly how it all plays out, but he's able to get in there and somehow he manages to cut her hair off. And so the rest of the book she has very short hair where she had shoulder length hair earlier in the book, he manages to cut all her hair off and kind of save her in this moment. And then the other girl is like, haha, I win. I am the blah blah blah. And her hair keeps getting bigger and bigger. And then eventually it does wrap around power lines. And it's not that in the book, or at least in the Movie description on IMDb it's implied that she got electrocuted. That's not what the depiction is in. At least that's not how I interpreted it in the book. In the book it wraps around these power lines and she gets stuck to the pole. And then it said that. And Shu Chi says earlier like that the hair is like drawing energy from the girls to like get bigger and bigger. And when it wraps around these power lines, it like traps her there and then it just absorbs the rest of her energy and literally like turns her into like a mummy. Like it like sucks all of the energy out of her. And like the shot of her in the book, she looks like when the Mummy from the Mummy, like, sucks the. Like the 1999 Brendan Fraser mummy, like, when he sucks the stuff out of the people to, like, regenerate himself, she looks like the corpses of the. Of the people who get the energy sucked out of them or whatever. It's. Yeah, it's really gnarly. And again, it's. That's another chapter that is actually exploring, like, an interesting. Which the movie touches on very briefly of being like, oh, I want to have, like, when that first interaction in the bathroom, there is some little bit of dialogue about, like, I would love to be looked at or whatever. But the book, the whole chapter is about that and it's very explicit. And that's also, as I mentioned, the chapter where we have the kid who falls off the roof, that's in that chapter. Because there's this kind of growing epidemic of these kids wanting attention. But the whole thing ends up being about jealousy and that period in your life as teenagers where you want people to look at you and about getting attention from boys and all that sort of stuff and the way that turns girls against each other. There's elements of actual stuff going on there. Again, it's not, like, super thematically rich and deep, and it doesn't feel necessarily like the point, but you can tell there's at least some interesting ideas being played with there. Whereas the movie, again, just the most surface level version of it, and again, cuts out. We don't get the anime hair battle, which is absurdly annoying that that doesn't happen. Again, I have to imagine that was a budget thing.
• 38:00
  Speaker B: Well, in the movie, we only get that one brief shot of her with
• 38:04
  Speaker A: the giant hair, which is identical to a shot, a panel in the book, of her walk down the hallway with it, like, float. That is like an identical recreation of a panel in the book.
• 38:14
  Speaker B: But, yeah, so there's this other character that we interact with throughout the film who's this guy that Kiri goes to school with who is, like, obsessed with her, and he likes to, like, pop out and startle her and then ask her to go out with him. Yep. And then close to the end of the movie, he ends up getting spiralized around the wheel of a car. Is any of that from the book?
• 38:49
  Speaker A: So, yes. Yes, it is. Again, I'm going to go on a diverge a little, explain what happens in the book. Because, again, it is way creepier and way more interesting in the book. Or at least way creepier in the book. This one, I kind of understand why they might cut it because of we'll get to that. But one thing that I did like better in the movie about this is they introduced this character earlier in the movie. In the book, he basically just shows up in the chapter he's in. There's a chapter about him, basically. And he only shows up in the beginning of that chapter in the movie. I like that he shows up way before the other stuff with him happens, and he becomes this kind of recurring character, which I thought made a lot of sense. It's very clear in the book that he didn't have the idea for this character until the chapter he wrote, that specific little vignette or whatever. But in the book, what happens is all very similar. He's obsessed. He likes scaring people. He likes surprising people. And so he always. I think the chapter might be called Jack in the Box, which we see her do.
• 39:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, he has one in the movie.
• 39:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, he always jumps out and scares her, but he also wants to date her. And he keeps talking about how like, oh, you should go out with me, blah, blah, blah. And this keeps happening over and over and over again. And eventually she does turn him down, or she keeps turning him down, but eventually she turns him down one time as they're out, like, on a street. And he says to her in the. I don't remember what he says in the movie, but he says something like. He's like, oh, I'll make you remember me. Or something like that.
• 40:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, something like that.
• 40:15
  Speaker A: And then he runs out in front of the car. In the book, he says, like, I'll show you how much I love you. My love can stop this car. And he jumps in front of a car, and it's not the. It's just a random car that we don't know know. And he gets run over by this car and killed. And he does get wrapped around the tire. Very. It's a very similar. The aftermath of it. It looks very similar to the panel in the book. That's where the book or the movie ends. That is not where that chapter ends in the book. Because then what happens, and this is incredible, is she starts having nightmares about him, and she does open a gift from him. I don't believe it's a Jack in the Box. I would have to go find the chapter. And remember, I don't. I don't think it's a Jack in the Box, but she ends up getting a gift from him. And she opens. Or she ends up getting, oh, it is a Jack in the Box. She does get a gift from him. That is a jack. In the box. But then she ends up getting. She hears the Jack in the Box toy talking to her, and it's like, it's all your fault. He died for you, didn't he? Blah, blah, blah. And she starts freaking out and thinking that, like. And. And then it says, like, he'll come back for you. She hears it say, he'll come back for you. So Shuchi takes her out to the cemetery where he's buried with a wooden stake.
• 41:28
  Speaker B: Oh.
• 41:29
  Speaker A: And they dig him up. They open. They dig up his freshly buried coffin. They open it and he springs out of it like a Jack in the box. No joke. He springs. He bursts out of the coffin like a jack in the box. And then starts chasing her, like, chasing after her through the cemetery, like, jumping after her. And then as he's jumping, he starts falling to pieces because he's all stitched together because of the car accident. He starts falling to pieces. And then eventually he gets to where it's just his torso and they walk over and they're like, oh, thank gosh. He's. He's dead. Like, his torso's dead or whatever. He won't be able to get after. And then his torso starts bouncing after, and he has a giant spring sticking out. And he starts chasing her as this torso. And they realize that the spring is the suspension from the car that ran him over. And then ultimately he does bounce enough that the spring falls out and then he kind of just dies. Like, they don't do anything. He just kind of. He bounces himself to death, basically. And. And so Jack in the Box never surprised anyone again. And he dies or his. His reanimated corpse dies. But. But yeah, that incredible stuff that I was really hoping to see in the movie because I thought it would be super creepy and awesome because I think the gag of a kid who was obsessed with surprising people and obsessed with Jack in the Boxes bursting out of his coffin like a Jack in the Box is so funny and dark and scary and weird that it's a great bit. And I was really disappointed it didn't make it into the movie.
• 43:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's.
• 43:11
  Speaker A: Again, I imagine budget stuff there of, like, it would be very hard to do all of that.
• 43:16
  Speaker B: Right, right, right, right. Damn. Does a gigantic millipede crawl into Sui Chi's mom's ear? Because this horrified me.
• 43:29
  Speaker A: Yes. This exact scene happens almost identically while she's in the hospital. A. It's like a centipede. It looks. It's like a millipede. Centipede, whatever. It crawls into her room and crawls into her ear and starts whispering to her. More creepy in the book. And that's the imagery we see in the movie. It's very similar, but it has her husband's face, Shuichi's dad's face on it, and it is whispering to her and it says it wants to crawl into her ears, blah, blah, blah. Because it says there's a spiral in there. I want to be inside your ear, or whatever. And then ultimately she does stab herself in the ear. But I would argue it's creepier in the book because in the movie she stabs herself in the ear with scissors or with a piece of ceramic. In the book, it's scissors. But in the book, it's implied that that just kills her and then. Cause they have her funeral right after
• 44:26
  Speaker B: that in the movie.
• 44:26
  Speaker A: Sorry, in the movie, it's implied that in the movie, it's implied that that just kills her because we have her funeral right after that.
• 44:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 44:33
  Speaker A: In the book, that does not kill her. What it does is that it destroys her inner ear. And so she gets trapped in, like, a delirious state of like.
• 44:46
  Speaker B: Like vertigo.
• 44:47
  Speaker A: Vertigo. So she gets trapped, like, in a spiral for the rest of her life? Yeah, it's very dark and creepy and, like, in a hospital. She eventually dies pretty shortly thereafter. But it's even darker and even creepier in the book than it is in the movie.
• 45:03
  Speaker B: Speaking of the Mummy, as we were
• 45:06
  Speaker A: a little bit ago. Yes.
• 45:09
  Speaker B: The faces in the sky. That's a thing in the manga you said. Right. Because in the movie, I thought it looked a lot like that scene from the Mummy, where it's the sand cloud face. Yeah.
• 45:21
  Speaker A: Yes, it is. They realize eventually that they're like the souls of the dead that are in the smoke. And then subsequently, and I mentioned this earlier, they're in the clay in Dragonfly Pond, which we see her dad gathering at one point in the movie. But he also does that, and he makes a pottery out of it. And then they see the faces in the pottery as well in the book, which we don't see that in the movie. But there's also a moment where we see him. And I don't. I couldn't remember exactly. We see him staring into the kiln at one point.
• 45:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. But I don't think so.
• 45:52
  Speaker A: Do we ever see what's in there or anything? I don't think so. Right.
• 45:56
  Speaker B: I thought there was a brief shot, but it was just like a. Like a spirally.
• 46:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or something like that. In the book, that same scene Happens where he's like, staring into the kiln and Curie comes in and then she looks in and when she looks in, she sees, like, the screaming souls and faces of, like, the people in this kiln because he's, like, baking with this clay made from their ashes or whatever. And. And like, he. And that's the other thing that's explained in the book that I don't know if he's explained in the movie, is that all of his pottery starts looking crazy and covered in spirals and stuff when he starts making it with the clay from Pond. But when he's making it, it all looks normal. And then after he fires it, it like, gets covered in spirals and all deformed and weird looking. And it's implied. Implied that the fire mixed with the, the. The ash, the stuff from the. The pond creates these weird. It, like, deforms it because again, like, they're burning in the kiln or whatever. But eventually Kiri sees that and she goes to, like, break down. Or maybe Shu Chi comes in and tries to. I think Shu Chi comes in, hears it, and he comes in and like, he hears his dad or whatever in there and he goes and he, like, breaks it and it causes their whole thing to burn. Like the whole workshop to burn down. It's a whole scene in the book where burns down their whole workshop after he tries to, like, break open the kiln to stop her dad from cooking the souls of his parents.
• 47:23
  Speaker B: Okay, so. So then.
• 47:25
  Speaker A: Oh, we're on the final question.
• 47:27
  Speaker B: We're on the. The final thing. Because this. This movie ends abruptly.
• 47:32
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 47:33
  Speaker B: And then it doesn't. But it does. So the end of this movie, Suici and Kiri go to find her dad.
• 47:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:43
  Speaker B: But I don't think they actually.
• 47:45
  Speaker A: No, they don't find him. And we see in the little afterword part that he's like, dead or.
• 47:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. But then Suichi starts to just, like, twist.
• 47:54
  Speaker A: He's like, oh, the spiral has me.
• 47:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's like, ah, the spiral has me. And he starts to, like, twist up and he tells Kiri to escape. And then the movie kind of just ends without revealing what happened to her.
• 48:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 48:10
  Speaker B: And then we get some, like, shots of some of the different things that we've already talked about, which appear to be like. What's it called?
• 48:22
  Speaker A: It looks like storyboard art.
• 48:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, it looks storyboard art. And then the movie ends. So.
• 48:29
  Speaker A: Okay, so, no, it ends very differently. I'm gonna cover a lot of stuff here. I put a lot of chapters that I had in Better in the book. I just moved them here because they explain this ending. So I'm just gonna cover a lot of stuff that is not in the movie at all that I think will help hopefully bring us to how the book ends, which is again, different than the movie. I will say there is a similarity in the sense that at the end of the book, Shuichi does start twisting up and then tell Kiri to run. That part is similar.
• 48:59
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 49:00
  Speaker A: And again, we talked about in the prequel the. The series was not. The manga series was not completed. Not completed when they filmed. So. But the fact that it. That moment is similar. Ish. Makes me think that maybe Junji Ito was involved and somehow and told an idea of how he thought he was going to end it. And thus they were working off like a kernel of like an idea of how it was gonna end, but not the actual ending. Because again, the ending is so different other than like the very brief little moment of him starting to twist up and telling her to run and save herself. But we'll get to the. We'll get to that ending and how it's different apart from that in a second. But we got to do some build up first. This is all better in the book. First we start with a chapter called the house. Kiri's house ends up being destroyed.
• 49:46
  Speaker B: This is the fire.
• 49:47
  Speaker A: No, no, no. Her house is not destroyed in the fire. Just the workshop where he builds the. The stuff is in this one. I believe it is destroyed by a storm. I'm pretty sure lots of stuff goes down at this point in the book. Stuff starts going real crazy. But I believe her house is destroyed in a storm. A typhoon shows up, which we do have a reference to in the movie that a storm is coming that happens in the book. And it sits over the island for days and days. It just sits there. And we find out it's trying to suck up Kiri specifically. None of that's really relevant for this. But her house is destroyed and her family ends up being forced to move in to an old haunted row house. That's a big thing. There are these old row houses in the book that are these very old buildings that have been there for like hundreds of years that are like more traditional style. Like these traditional style Japanese homes that multiple home families live in and they're called row houses. And there's this really old one she gets kind of forced in to move. Her family gets forced to move into. And there's like two other families in it. It in the apartment next to them. There's like this one guy who's just kind of like. Seems like a normal guy. And then the other apartment on the other side supposedly has some squatters in it that he says have been there before any all the storms and everything went down. And we get this very creepy shot of an eyeball staring at Kiri one night through the wall. And we think it's like, okay, what's going on? We find out then eventually that the people living in the. The other apartment are this old woman and her son who have this weird spiral wart condition. We see them later and they have these spiral warts that grow out of like, everywhere. They look like, similar to like, those people who have like, that tree condition. I don't know what it's called, but you know where, like, I don't know what that is, but where they grow these warts that end up looking almost like tree bark or something like that, kind of like that, except they grow out in, like, these spiky points. Eventually, the son, very briefly into this chapter, the son dies and passes away. The medics come and take his body away. And then suddenly Kiri's family starts getting all these warts. Very weird and creepy. Then we find out in this chapter that the eyeball that we saw peering through the wall that we initially thought was these weird neighbors turns out to actually have been the normal guy neighbor who was just creeping on Kiri. And then he ends up getting all these warts and he turns into this giant, horrifying. Truly, like, horrifying looking, like, wart monster thing that has like. It's like. They call him like, horns or something. But he has all these, like, spines, like, coming out of him everywhere. It's very. If you have like, trypophobia, it's like, not good for that. He comes, like, bursting through the wall and ends up almost killing them or whatever. But he's trying to get to Kiri because again, he's like, obsessed with her and he's been spying on her. And she starts running away and goes outside and the storms are still going on that destroyed their house. And he ends up getting killed by like, a piece of debris from the storm blowing like a. Blows like a log through his neck or something like that and kills him. And then the storm ends and they leave the house and their warts go away and they're fine. And that's how that chapter ends. Then we get to a chapter called Butterflies. And then. And Cherry or Cherie, I don't know how to pronounce her name. Who is the reporter that we see in the movie, she introduced herself. She shows up in town in her van with her news reporter people, except they're immediately hit by a tornado or like a typhoon or like a whirlwind or whatever. And their van crashes. And her two colleagues immediately are killed in that crash. She makes it into town and finds that the town. And so they were coming to town because nobody has been able to communicate with this town in, like, months because these storms have been sitting over it and, like, knocked out all the infrastructure and stuff. And so nobody knows what's going on in this town. Nobody's been able to communicate. So they're coming to, like, do this reporting on this town. She gets in and the town is, like, flattened. There's, like, barely any buildings left. Like, the shots we see in the panels in the book are just, like, debris everywhere. There's, like, a few houses and buildings here and there, but, like, this, like, tornado after tornado went through this place. She gets in, she doesn't see anybody. She comes across these three children tied and bound to these, like, pieces of wood in the midst of this rubble. And they have their mouths gagged and they're, like, tied to these things. They're like these little kids. And she's like, what the hell? And she runs over and she frees them and cuts them free, and they promptly blow down a building with, like, magical powers. So it turns out we will find out. Initially you think, like, oh, they have these weird powers. Somehow they can, like. They, like. They can scream and basically create, like, a tornado out of their mouth. And they're, like, destroying buildings and they're. They're basically running around, like, carefree. Like, they think it's, like, a lot of fun to, like, just destroy stuff. So that's what they're doing. And that's. So the people, the other survivors in the town tied them up at some point. We never see any of this happen, but whatever. But they come to, like, attack her. They get mad at her because she tries to stop them from doing so this. And then she screams at them and blows them away with, like, a thing. And you're like, well, what's going on here? And it turns out we find out that because of the weird spiral magic power that's going on, any very, like, loud noises can create these whirlwinds. So you can, like, basically harness wind power and, like, do stuff with it. It's crazy. Eventually, Kiri finds her and takes her this reporter and takes her to the longhouse or the row house that her and her family are living in. And basically only the row houses have survived this. All of the modern buildings have all been destroyed, but these old ancient war row houses have all survived for some reason. And so all of the surviving villagers are living together in these row houses, like, hundreds of them packed into, like, single rooms and stuff like that. And everyone is, like, trapped in this town. The kids then show up again and try to blow down the old house, but they can't. And in the up, I remember what. I think it might get blown into the lake or something. I don't know, whatever. But. So that all goes down. It's crazy. Then we get to a chapter called Chaos, which. This is wild. I was really hoping this is going to be in the movie, but I understand why it wasn't. There are now gangs of twister riders. People have learned how to harness the wind and are, like, literally riding around. They're like roaming gangs riding around inside tornadoes, just destroying stuff for fun, like adults now. But they, like, wear bike helmets and stuff. And they. They, like, fly around in tornadoes. It's incredible. Also, more and more as this went on, this all felt more and more. And I hesitate to attribute it to this because I know it can be reductive to be like, well, Japanese media, if, like, it can be reductive to attribute a lot of thematically, what's going on to, like, the atomic bombs. But I do think a lot of the imagery in the later half of this book and a lot of the stuff going on to me, feels very responsive to and informed by a culture shaped by being. Having two atomic bombs dropped on them. The way that this village is destroyed and the way it's kind of flattened and the way lots of other stuff. I don't get into all the details, but, yeah, eventually the house this. This row house they're living in kicks Kiri and her family and the reporter and Shuchi out because of. I can't remember what happens. They get mad at him about something. They kick him out of the house. So they go out and they. They have to go, like, find their own way now. They end up living in, like, the old abandoned ruins of some other house. They come across a group of these whirlwind writers who are cooking and eating the snail people, because there's a bunch of snail people. But it's, like, the only food source a lot of people can find. The whole end of this book, it's crazy. It gets the. The first half of this book is like weird little vignettes in a normal world. The second half turns into a post apocalyptic, like, survival story adventure. It's very interesting. I actually like the second half a lot more than the first half because it felt like it had more of an actual, like, narrative that was like, going somewhere. But they're, like, finding and cooking these snail people. Ultimately, they're. They're gonna grab and kill Kiri and her family and stuff. Shuichi ends up being able to save them and basically knocks all of the Whirlwind Riders into the pond, into the Dragonfly pond, which sucks them up and absorbs them, and they're able to get away. And again, the whole ending then becomes this very interesting kind of family adventure that honestly reminds me a little bit of over the Garden Wall in ways where we're kind of going from vignette to vignette. But it's this group of family members trying to survive this weird ordeal. So then they get back to another row house and. And they find out that all of the people in the row houses have fused together into like, a giant rat king. Basically, like, all of their limbs have become intertwined and they're like one giant weird organism inside the row houses. And so her and her brother and Shu Chi and them have to go out on their own to kind of survive on their own. And I believe at this point it is Kiri, her younger brother, and Shuji. And I think that's it, because I think at this point, point, at this point. At one point, Curie's mother was still alive, but I believe she has disappeared at this point as well as everybody else. I think it's just the three of them at this point. They're going out kind of. They're like, we got to try to walk out of here. We got to try to. We're going to try to, like, hike out of this town. Basically. They're like, we can't get out of here. We gotta. We're gonna, like, try to go through the mountains to get out of this town. They start going through the mountains to try to get out of town. They're not able to eventually come across some aid workers who are coming to, like, help the town. Also on this trip, Mitsuo, who is her younger brother, starts slowly turning into a snail. He. He has the snail thing, and he is like, slowly turning into a snail. They run into these aid workers who end up kind of becoming evil and become obsessed with, like, eating the snail people as well. They're like, these snail people are so delicious. We love eating them, blah, blah, blah. And then they Kind of start to find out that Mitsuo is turning into a snail, so they want to try to eat him. So they have to run away from these people. And then at that point, Mitsuo fully turns into a snail. They're trying to run away from these guys. They get to a giant cliff on the edge of town that, like, leads to the ocean. And they have to leave her brother because they're like, hey, you can get away. And they, like, leave him there. And they're like, climb down this cliff. They won't be able to follow you. You'll be safe down there. We'll find you later. We're gonna lead them away, basically. So they drop him off, then they run away. And then eventually, I don't remember what happens to the aid guys. They. I think they die or something goes on. Eventually, Shiruichi, Kiri and Chari, the reporter, get to the town, which has now been rebuilt into a single giant spiral row house. So it is one giant row house that spirals out from the center of town. And Shu Chi speculates that this is what the town actually used to look like. Because earlier, while they were living in one of the old row houses, they found a drawing of a spiral that was like a map of the town that looked like a big building or whatever. When they get back to the row house, they start talking to somebody in there. I can't remember who it is. It's one of the characters. They talk to this guy, and they're like. They find out that they've essentially been gone, wandering in the woods for, like, years. And because they're like, well, how did this whole thing get built? Well, we were gone for, like, a day or whatever. And they're like. It turns out they've been gone for, like, years. And this is. It's revealed that time has spiraling in a weird way, too. And in the same way that on a record player, the outside of a record moves faster than the inside of a record. It's a physics thing.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker A: As they were further away from the center of the spiral, time was moving faster than it was near the center of this spiral. So while they were way out in the woods on the outskirts, time was passing very quickly, or vice versa or whatever.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker A: And so I think is the idea, anyways. I think that would be backwards, but doesn't matter. Time has passed, so they've built all the Rat King people inside. This is. I know, it's crazy. The Rat King people inside the building have decided that they need to. They have. They have connected all the row houses into the spiral. That's what they feel like they've needed to do. And so Kiri and Shuichi and them realize they're like, we have to try to get to the center of this spiral. I don't even remember exactly why they need to, but they just know they need to get to the center of the spiral. So they start trying to go in. It becomes like a labyrinth, basically. They start trying to get to the center of the spiral. They get to a point where, like, oh, we can cut through this building. Because, like, they're still actively building the spiral as they're doing it. Like, the Rat King people are, like, connecting parts of it. And at one point, they're like, we got to try to cut through this to get to the next part. And they try to cut through it, and Chari, the reporter, ends up getting caught and, like, boarded up inside, and they lose her, and she gets, like, sucked into the Rat King people thing. Very crazy. Eventually, they get to the middle and to the center of town, which is where the pond was, which is where Dragonfly Pond was, which is, if you remember, that's where the smoke and everything was getting sucked down into the pond is now gone. Instead, there is a giant pit down to the center of the earth there. Okay, With a spiral staircase that circles all the way down. So at one point, they start. So they start going down. They're like, this is. I guess this is the only thing we can do. We got to go down there. They start going down the stairs to get down to the. To figure out, like, what's going on here. As they're going down, at one point, they come across a person who's all spirally and twisted up, who, like, begs them to take them to the bottom. And when they refuse, it tries to, like, tackle them. And Shu Chi ends up kind of fighting them off, but then gets tackled and falls down the hole into the pit. And so now it is just Kiri at this point, and she's like, well, I guess I'll go see. I gotta go down there. So she keeps going down, eventually gets down and into the pit, falls down, this other thing lands at the very bottom of the pit. And it is revealed that there is a giant, like, underground, ancient spiral city that exists down here. And the. The floor, and, like, everywhere is just, like, thousands and thousands of, like, spiral people, like, piled up in, like, this weird, insane thing. They've also turned to stone. She sees. She finds her parents, who have been, like, turned to stone down there. Oh, she finds Shuichi. She does find Shuichi down there. And he's alive still. And he's explaining that he thinks the ancient spiral city can like reach above ground every hundred or thousand years. And basically like calls people down and continues building itself. Like this thing has been here forever and every now and then it calls up to like our world.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker A: And like sucks our whole village down and adds more people to it and like, like self perpetuates in this weird cycle or whatever. And then eventually he starts turning into a spiral and he tells Curie to like run and save herself and she's going to. And then she. But she changes her mind and goes, no, I want to stay with you. And they tangle up together into like, like a knot and turn into stone. And then it ends. The end. I know it's insane, but that is all of the stuff that happens kind of from like. Yeah. So none of that obviously is in the.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker B: No, not even.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker A: All of that stuff was super interesting. It's so funny to me that that, to me, that was all the stuff. The first half of this book, which is basically what the movie mostly translates is like, like weird little one off creepy stories that kind of are vaguely connected by the idea of a spiral but don't really have much of a consistent narrative through it. From the rest second half of the book to the end, we get this insane, completely nuts narrative about this town turning into a spiral town and them trying to escape and survive and all this sort of stuff that I thought was really, really interesting and compelling. And I was very disappointed that the movie didn't do any of it. Now again, I think a lot of that has to do with budget because that second half there's a lot more crazy stuff going on. Yeah, the first half very easy to do on a relatively small budget. Cause it's mostly just a few scary makeup jobs and blah blah, blah. Whereas the end of this we have big set pieces and huge giant elaborate sets.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker B: A giant pit with an ancient spiral
• 1:06:01
  Speaker A: sitting in it and houses that you have to be building actively and people in a giant rat king. There's a lot there that would be very difficult to do. That being said, I really like the end of the book so well. I still have an issue with the very end of the book. It's funny, the book ending actually still feels abrupt kind of similarly to how the movies does. Like when she gets down there, you keep expecting something to happen or she's gonna find something and then. No, her and Shuichi just tangle up together and it Ends you're like, oh, okay. Like, it's a little disappointing, but it's way more interesting than what the movie is does. So there you go. All right. Katie's got a couple questions for Lost. An adaptation. Just show me the way to get out of here and I'll be on my way. Yes, yes.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker B: And I want to get un.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker A: Lost as soon as possible.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker B: Really? Just one. I think the second note is yours. Sui's father, I take it that he somehow died in the washing machine.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker A: Yes, in the movie. Yeah.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker B: But I was wondering if maybe you could expand on that or if we actually see what happens in the book and then we kind of, like, we see it kind of later in Kiri's dream.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker A: She looks like we see.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, I wasn't sure if that was actually what happened or if she was just dreaming because it kind of looks like the washing machine is just filled with flesh.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So in the book, he actually doesn't get into a washing machine. That is a movie addition. In the book, he has this weird. They're looking for him both. It's a flashback, but we see it's Shu Chi and his mother are looking for her father. His father. They can't find him. And they go into his study, and he has this weird, large, round, like, wooden tub in his study. And they're like, what is this? We've never seen this before. And then they open it up and they find his body spiraled into this weird wooden tub, and he's.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker B: That is kind of what it looked.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker A: That is kind of what it looks like in the washing machine. And I. I don't know if they just thought that, like, people wouldn't be. Would be. Like, why did. What's this weird wooden thing? I don't know.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker B: I mean, the idea of climbing into a washing machine and dying is pretty horrifying.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker A: And it makes a little bit sense.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker B: It does, it does. It does.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker A: So it kind of makes sense. It is a similar idea. I do think that the movies or the book's version is slightly creepier just the way it's revealed and we actually see it in the moment, like when they find him, as opposed to, like, revealing it later, kind of in a dream thing. I don't know. I thought that was weird. But there's also elements. I think that the movie is a whole different thing. There's times where I feel like the movie is intentionally avoiding the more supernatural, crazy stuff and playing a bit with the idea of, like, what's real and what's not. Because one of the things that we keep seeing in the movie in like weird flashes is the image of. I think it's Shu Chi's dad with the coiled tongue. Yeah, we get that. We get a couple flashes of that where like jump scare, like, did you actually see that or did you not? In the book he just does that in front of Kiri. Like when she comes to see him one time, he's just like, look, I can make a spiral. And he sticks his tongue out and he makes this giant creepy spiral with it. And she's like, what the. Like, yeah. And the movie takes that and goes like, oh, well, that we're not actually like, is that real or is it not? And the same thing here with like what his body looks like in the washing machine. The fact that we only see it in a dream makes me wonder if the movie is trying to play with the idea of what's actually happening isn't as supernatural as what people are imagining is happening. Whereas in the book it's just very explicitly. Yeah, a bunch of crazy magical bullshit is happening. And I think the movie maybe was trying to do that thing of like, what's real and what's not. Maybe the more realistic explanation is this stuff, but like, people are kind of imagining more horrific, like supernatural style things. You know what I mean? I almost wonder. And I think that was a mistake. I think they should have just leaned in and been like, yeah, a bunch of really fucked up crazy shit's happening.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, people are turning into snails.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that to be fair. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. So that's true because. Yeah, but see, you also never see him like fully turn into a snail. I guess at the end we kind of do with that one storyboard shot of the. The reporters. But like, that would also, like, the snail thing's a good example of that. Like, we see him with like a weird growth on his back and he's all like wet and slimy. But then the next time we see a snail, it's just a giant snail, we don't actually see him turn into a. You know what I mean? I don't know. To me, it kind of felt like the movie was trying to play it both ways to like leave this idea of like, ooh, what's actually happening kind of thing. And I thought that.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker B: Which, I mean, I think could be interesting on its own. It could be an interesting version of the story.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker A: But yeah, I just don't think it works that well in the movie anyways. But speaking of, I Put this here because I didn't know where else to put it. But we talked about this earlier and we were just talking about it now. The fact that after the movie ends, like ends and we get the final shot with like Kiri and Chuchi, we get these weird like store seemingly storyboard shots. Yeah, they look like drawings to me. Or like anime. Like. Like hand.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker B: They don't look like drawings.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, photos or anything like that of resolutions of some earlier plot threads of like again the. Like the. The reporters leaving the town in the van turning into snails, the girl being on the power line and stuff. And I truly felt like that combined with how abruptly the whole Shui Kiri thing plays out. I was like, I feel like this movie ran out of money and just had to end. Yeah, like that's how it feels like to me. How abruptly that scene like where he like starts turning into a spiral and then like tries to grab her and we just cut. I was like, what? Okay, that's a very abrupt ending. And then on top of that, these storyboards trying to wrap up other plot threads. I was like, I bet they were gonna film these other things and they just couldn't. They. They ended up going over budget or something and. Yeah, I think that's what happened.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker B: No, that seems pretty obvious to me.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker A: I feel pretty confident. I didn't see anything about that anywhere. But that's really what it feels like. So. All right, we got a few more things I want to talk about that I thought were better in the book. You like to read? Oh yes, I love to read.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker B: What do you like to doing? Everything.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker A: So I'm just going to cover a few more chapters here that did not make it into the movie that I really liked. I mentioned this chapter earlier, but there's one called the scar where this new girl. No, that's a Zami. New girl named Aami shows up at the school and she has a crescent moon scar on her forehead. And this is. Leads into the whole hair chapter. But she starts. She's like. She has this scar and she says that that the other girls like start speculating that this scar gives her the power to like get any boy she wants. And then it has like magical properties and it seems to be the case. But then eventually it's revealed that her scar turns into a spiral and then it slowly starts consuming her. And we get some very gnarly moments of seeing her with this scar like. Like consuming her face and stuff. And where some of the more famous shots from this. But yeah, she gets this spiral on her forehead. And then eventually it starts, like, eating away. And we get this shot where it's like her eyeball is, like, sitting there in the middle of this spiral in her head. And then eventually, like, her whole head becomes like a spiral. And then ultimately it, like, sucks in a guy. And then ultimately it, like, consumes her whole body and she gets, like, sucked up by the spiral scar on her head and disappears. It's very interesting. Interesting. Super gnarly and. I don't know, I liked it. There's another chapter called Twisted Soul where we briefly talk about meet these two kids who live in row houses. At either end, it's a boy and a girl, and they fall in love. But the two family. It's a Romeo and Juliet story. The two families hate each other. They keep getting caught running away, and their parents are abusive. Eventually they. They run away together. I think Kiri helps them run away or shoot you or somebody. They run away. They end up getting caught on the beach trying to get away. But then instead of being taken back home and separated, they end up twisting together like snakes and they slither into the sea together. And that's how that chapter ends, which is fun. There's a chapter called the Black Lighthouse where there's this old abandoned lighthouse on the shore that starts emitting a strange light every night. Eventually, at one point, some guys from town go to investigate and then never show back up again. And then other people in town start walking in circles when this lighthouse is going and stuff like that, that. Eventually Kiri ends up there. Some of her brother and some of the other boys, like, wanted to go see what was going on there. And they end up running inside and she has to chase him in to, like, get. Because she's, like, worried about him. They end up. She ends up going up this, like, endless spiral staircase, just up and up and up forever. Eventually, she stumbles across the dead bodies of the missing men from earlier who went trying to investigate what was going on with this lighthouse. Because there wasn't supposed to be anybody in it, like, running it or anything like that. That. So she finds the dead bodies of the men. Eventually she gets to the top and finds her brother is at the very top. And she finds the. The light at the top is this giant spiral eyeball thing that's, like, in the place of the light. And then she realizes, oh, crap, we have to get out of here. Because the bodies on the stairs earlier were all burnt. They were all, like, burnt to a crisp. And it's because the light turns on Every night. And it's like it's almost sundown. We got to get out of here. So she grabs her brother and they're. And this other boy that he's with and they have like running the stairs and the stairs go on and on forever. Eventually they start falling and they get one of the boy, the other boy, not her brother. The light starts like coming down the stairwell after them and he gets caught by it and like incinerated. But her and her brother fall out just in time and escape. And it's, it's again just a little vignette, but it's fun. And then the other two craziest chapters in this book that are related are mosquitoes and the umbilical cord. We start getting mosquitoes showing up that like start flying around in town and they're like, well, this is weird. We haven't had mosquitoes in a long time. And Kiri ends up finding the body of this mosquito bitten woman who's just like covered in these holes. And then she ends up going into the hospital for, I think, oh, for the injury related to her when she fell down the lighthouse stairs. She's all banged up, so she has to go in the hospital. While she's in the hospital, she discovers that all of the pregnant women in the hospital at night are infected by these mosquitoes somehow. And they go around drilling holes into patients with like those old time hand drill things and drinking their blood. This includes Curie's cousin who we're introduced to, who's having her first baby, who is in the hospital. Ultimately they all, they all like, they. So they're like killing all these, the other patients at night and drinking their blood. They try to attack Curie. At one point she ends up fending them off with bug spray. And then for whatever something happens. And then the next morning, the evidence of all of their crimes that have gone away. The book does a lot of hand waving away of like mysterious, like magical stuff. But the next morning like she's the only person who remembers that like, and knows that like all of these, these pregnant women were the ones like killing these. Everybody else thinks it's something to do with like the mosquitoes or something like that, but she's like, no, it's the pregnant women. They're drilling holes in people and drinking their blood. And then that chapter ends with the book being like, and now they're carrying their human babies to term who have been fed on like human blood or what. Next chapter is called the Umbilical Cord. Again, Curie is The only one who knows about all of this. All of the mothers have their babies and it's all. It keeps being remarked upon by all the people that how like, pretty and perfect these babies are. They're all like kind of identical looking, but they also all have these weird big bulging bellies. Kiri is like, not having it. She's like, something's going on here. She's like, this is some crazy bullshit. Also, she's still in the hospital because she keeps getting hurt while she's in the hospital. The hospital starts feeding them different food and it's these weird special mushrooms. And she's like, what are these? I don't like these mushrooms. And the doctor's like, no, yeah, they're great. They're really good for you or whatever. And she's like, I don't know. Then at one point she over while she's in the nursery one night or something, she overhears the babies talking to each other and they're talking about how they want to go back in the wombs because, like, it was way more comfortable in there and they hated out here and all that sort of thing. And then one of them, the bellies, these weird distended bellies of the babies detaches and starts floating up in the air. And it's like a. It. It turns out it's the placenta and the umbilical cord is like still attached to them. Anyways, we find out the doctor has been taking somehow farming the placentas from these weird vampire baby things and growing them in one of the rooms in the hospital into these like, mushroom things. And that's what he's been feeding all of the patients. And then he did end up putting Kiri's cousin's baby back inside of her. And we get some horrifying shots of Keiko, who is Kiri's cousin, like, all sewn back up with, like, her, like, so this is like the room full of all the mushrooms, like the placenta mushrooms or whatever. And then the doctor's like, yeah, I've been growing them because they're super healthy and good for you. And then he explains that he put Kiko's baby back inside of her. And then Kiko gets up and she is like now a vampire and starts chasing Kiri around and goes to like, drink her blood, but ends up grabbing the doctor, the evil doctor guy instead and sucking all of his blood out. And Kiri is able to escape. And then that chapter ends and we don't really touch on any of that ever. Again, but it's wild. It's insane. I kind of loved it. I understand, I think, why it was not in the movie, because it's a complete diversion, but it's completely batshit insane. I didn't even do a good job explaining it, but I liked it and it's better in the book. So there we go. All right. I got one thing to talk about for better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies. So I did mention a couple other things I liked better in the movie at this point. But one of the other things that I thought was really. One particular shot that I thought was really interesting in the movie is very, very early on. We get a shot, I believe it's Shu Chi and Kiri walking down a hallway. Did you notice this?
• 1:21:19
  Speaker B: I think it's her and her friend when they're in school.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker A: Her and her friend, and they're walking down the hallway. And. And at each doorway, there's, like, a student on either side of the hall standing there, just, like, staring at the ground, not moving.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker A: And it's completely unremarked upon. And they walk through a whole hallway full of, like, a dozen of these kids.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker A: And I thought it was very creepy and cool. And the fact that the movie doesn't reference it at all. And it's not. It's not in the book that I noticed. At least I don't remember it being in the book. But I thought it was a very fun, like, disconcerting moment that is, again, never alluded to, never explained, never mentioned. And it's just. It's. It adds to the creepy vibes. So I liked. I liked that shot. That's all I got other than the stuff I mentioned earlier. All right, let's go ahead and talk about what the movie nailed. As I expected, practically perfect in every way. Again, a lot. It's. The movie is very faithful in a lot of ways other than all the ways that it's not. But it does start. It does start with her voiceover, specifically about telling the story of her town and the strangeness that happened there. That is how the book starts. That is also how the movie starts and ends. The chapter titles that we get in the movie, there's only one shared title, which is Erosion, but we do get. Each chapter has its own little title that goes with it. The Evening Siren. I mentioned this earlier. Still not exactly what. Sure that's for. But if somebody else can tell me, that would be Helpful. Shu Chi's dad being all in into Kiri's dad's pottery and asking for a spiral pottery piece. That happens in the book. He's obsessed with the spiral fish cake that he keeps eating. And then when he doesn't have any, he, like, swirls his soup. Same thing happens in the book. The spiral tongue imagery. I mentioned that earlier. We see it. It's played out differently, but that came from the book. The hospital establishing shot. We get an establishing shot of the hospital at least once in the movie that is almost identical to the establishing shot of the hospital. In the book, Shuji does try to get rid of all the spirals that he could find in the hospital so that his mom isn't, like, tortured by them. And that includes. He sees a poster of the inner ear.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker A: Which has a spiral, and he's like, oh, shit. And he has to get rid of it. In the book, we get a great moment where his mom's like, I think it's after the centipede scene starts asking, like, are there spirals in your ears? And she, like, goes to the doctor and she's like, are there spirals in your ears? And he's like, no, no, definitely. And then she looks and she's like, don't you have a poster or a book or something? And he's like, no, no, I don't. And she's like, Typhoon does show up in both, although the movie doesn't do much with it. The reporter showing up, Cherry, or whatever her name is. Again, we're not doing any of the other part of her storyline, but she is the same character. The imagery of the giant snails crawling up the school, like the shot on the news story, is almost identical to the panel in the book. The reporter's trying to drive out of the tunnel. In the book, it, like, never ends. They just keep driving and driving, and it never ends. In the movie, they crash and turn into snail whatever. But they do try to drive out of the tunnel. And then, specifically, we only see it, like, one time in the movie. But the actual imagery of what Kiri's dad's pottery looks like is very, very similar to what his pottery looks like. Like, oh, yeah, in the book, like, it's almost identical. This weird, misshapen, like, random shapes covered in spiral patterns. Looks basically identical. All right, let's go ahead and get to a few odds and ends.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker B: Something that struck me, like, pretty much as soon as the movie started. I don't know if it was just the. If it was the green filter that was over everything. Or if maybe this was just like a style at the time or a style in Japan at the time. But I thought that like this movie looked older than something made in the late 90s.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker B: Felt like it looked like it was made in like the 70s.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. So part of that. It's a couple of different things. I think. Think I really enjoyed most of the cinematography in this and the color grading that you're mentioning there of like the. The kind of greens and yellows and stuff.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's very green.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker A: I thought that all really felt like the imagery in the manga. The manga is black and white primarily. There are a couple sections that are briefly color before transitioning to black and white, but it's almost entirely black and white. I really liked all of that. I. I think part of what's going on there is a couple things. One, the color grade does make it look. Look a very distinct style. Two, it's shot on film and it's shot on not super great film. I think part of that is a budget. So they might be using literally old film.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker A: Because there's. There's particular moments. I saw multiple moments in the film where you get that like black mark in the corner that pops up that you would get that he makes a reference to in Fight Club, like the burn mark on the corner of the thing or whatever. And how it's something to do with the spool. I don't know. I don't know if that's actually what it is or not. But there's there were some film artifacts that. That in a higher quality film you might not get. This, I think was a cheaper film that also adds to kind of the texture and feel of it and makes it feel like the 70s. And then on top of that, I think part of it might be. And this is a little bit of generalizing, but this was filmed, you know, late like 1999 or something like that in Japan. A lot of times in film markets outside of the US they are not using the most up to date current technology when they're filming movies. A lot of times the. The technology, like the current, like best of the best film cameras and stuff like that are all being used in Hollywood productions and stuff like that. And they're crazy expensive and they're just not practical for smaller production houses around the world to. To use. And so they may be filming this on film, on film camera, good film cameras, but film cameras from the 80s, the 70s and stuff like that because they still work so I think there's a combination of those things and then also tends to be like style and trends in like how films look tend to lag behind in other places where Hollywood, I don't want to say sets the standard, but like what you think of what a modern movie looks like tends to be, at least in America, tends to come from what Hollywood is doing. And then that style tends to kind of proliferate out. That style is also influenced by places around the world and stuff like that. So it's complicated. But point being, I think all of those factors make it look like, yeah, a movie that is a little bit older than 2000 in a lot of ways. But I also felt very stylistically in certain ways felt very late 90s, early 2000s. Like the big wide angle lenses, close ups on people's faces and stuff like that felt very like 90s, early 2000. I mean, it also was 80s as well, but like it felt like Spike Lee, you know, do the right thing or like Brazil and like stuff Terry Gilliam and lots of other directors at that time were doing. And also it makes sense that I'm pretty sure this guy was like a music video and commercial director because it feels like a movie shot by a music video director or commercial. And I mean that in both positive and negative ways in terms of like some of the ways the close ups and stuff are shot. It's a lot of stuff. And the fact that the whole movie is kind of style over substance in a lot of ways.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker B: But anyways, we mentioned in the prequel that the author Junji Aito has a cameo of sorts in this. He's on a wanted poster in town and I was this kind. Made me laugh.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker A: Oh, me too. It's the exact same thing.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker B: I was expecting it to be like somewhere in the background of a shot where you could. Like an Easter egg and you're like, oh, look, there's the, there's the wanted poster. But it gets not just its own dedicated shot, but it has like a music sting.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker A: It has a music sting and the voiceover. And we had a caption that says wanted Junji Ito. And you're like, oh, okay, yeah, that is not remotely. Yeah, I thought the exact same thing. I assumed it was going to be like in the background of a shot or even the, the. The focus of a shot, but maybe a little more subtle. And it's just like his photo, but it's a different name of a character. You know what I mean? Like something. No, no, just. Yep.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker B: Just.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker A: That's the, that's the guy. That's it right there.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker B: I saw a lot of letterboxd reviews for this when I was going through them, complaining about the editing.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker B: And having watched it now, I can definitely see why.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker B: I think there were some editing choices that I liked that I found very compelling. And there were other ones.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, I noticed. I'm pretty sure at least one just straight up, I think editing error, like where a clip got cut in where it wasn't supposed to be. I would have to go back and find the exact moment. But I'm pretty sure there was at least one moment where I'm like, I think that's just straight up a mistake. I could be wrong, but it felt like it. And then there were some other. Yeah, it.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker B: And there is at least one. Like, like wipe transition. Oh, the sound effect.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, with the sound effect. And it's like the only one.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker A: And you're like, that's an interesting choice because it is like, okay, you're doing like. It's like a. It's a spiral wipe or whatever. You're drawing attention that. But they don't. It's not a recurring thing. It's just that one time. And you're like, okay, interesting choice. Yeah.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker B: Never seen anybody that excited about a cantaloupe.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker A: She is very excited about a.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker B: Very excited about that cantaloupe.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I do wonder because that also could be a thing where I think part of that might be that we are. And I could be wrong, but that we're conditioned to. I don't know where cantaloupes are, like, popular. It also part of it might just be culturally, what fruits are more popular in different places, but also.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker B: And more widely available.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker A: That's what I was getting at is the wide availability. In the US we can get basically almost any fruit other than very hyper specific, you know, but a lot of fruits we can at the local grocery store without any issue. Whereas I think in some places, especially further back in time, it was a lot more rare to get certain fruits or whatever. So it was a nice surprise and that sort of thing. There was one moment, a sound editing moment that cracked me up is there's a scene where she wakes up from her dream or her nightmare and she hears pottery breaking somewhere else. I think this is when she goes see her dad looking in the kiln or whatever. And the sound effect that they use for the pottery breaking is the.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker A: Did you recognize that?
• 1:31:59
  Speaker B: Yes, it is the one.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker A: The one. The pot breaking, bowl breaking.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker B: The sound.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker A: The sound effect.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker B: The sound that all Pottery makes when it breaks.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker A: I was cracking up because you don't use the. It's like the Willem scream. Willem scream of pottery breaking. Once you've heard it, you're thinking it probably right now. If you know, if at all, if this is like ringing a bell at all, you're like, yeah, no, I know exactly, exactly what you're talking about. They use that sound effect. There's a handful of those. There's a classic metal gate opening one that's very similar. There's a door opening one that. There's a bunch of those that are like. That's that sound effect.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker B: I feel like there's like a baby crying one maybe. Yes, yes.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. There are quite a few of them that are like were overused in tons of stuff and became. And now they're not used in anything anymore except for as like Easter egg jokes. Similar to like a Wilhelm scream. Because they're so, so prolific and so recognized that they become. They take you out of the experience of watching the movie.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker B: Something that I thought was interesting and kind of compelling. There were parts of this movie that reminded me of like a horror game walkthrough. Like if you're like watching somebody play like a, a first person pov. Like horror game.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I don't think that was probably accidental. I think that was. I mean, horror games popular everywhere, but particularly popular in Japan. There's a lot of horror like video game series that came out of Japan. And so yeah, it would not surprise me at all if that were intentional. So before we get to the final verdict, we want to remind you that you can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Goodreads, any of those places. Interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about Uzumaki, the book or the movie. Whatever you got to say, we would love to hear it. We'll talk about it on the next prequel episode. You can also help us out by heading over to Apple, Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. Write us a five star review, really helps us out and you can also Support us@patreon.com ThisFilmIsLit get access to bonus content starting at the five dollar a month level. We just put out our review and discussion on Maddie's Secret for this month and we'll have another episode out next month on I Saw the TV Glow. So just every month we're putting out a new bonus episode for our $5 patrons. And at the 15 doll, you get access to priority recommendations. If there's something you would really like for us, or priority requests, whatever you want to call it, if there's something you would really like for us to talk about, Support us for 15 bucks a month, request it, and we will put it on our schedule as soon as we possibly can. And this, in fact, was a patron request from the one, the only Shelby. Shelby. There you go. Thank you, Shelby. I think she might be topping the list of patron requests at this point. She's been a. She's been an Academy Award patron for a long time.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker B: For a long time. Yeah.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker A: Yes. One of our oldest patrons. Thank you, Shelby. I say old longest running patrons. I don't think she's one of the.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker B: I don't know, the average age of our patrons.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker A: I have no idea. One of our longest tenured patrons, shall we say. All right, it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker B: Sentence fast.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker A: Verdict after.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker B: That's stupid.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker A: Uzumaki was a really fun, creepy read. It goes in directions I was never expecting, and towards the end really starts to find a compelling narrative that feels more intentional than the first half's strange but somewhat disjointed little vignettes. The ending left me wanting more, but I really enjoyed my time with the story and found some thematic moments worth thinking on. The movie unfortunately pales in comparison to what the manga is able to accomplish. It is a steadfast recreation of many of the book's more memorable panels, but it seems to lack an understanding of both the more interesting thematic elements in the book, as well as what makes some of the imagery so scary. It's the exhausting attention to detail in depicting these extremely horrific and often physically impossible situations that makes the manga truly terrifying. The film paints too broadly in the moments where it does manage to depict some of the most horrifying images. To be fair to the film, I'm honestly not sure how possible this would have ever been to achieve, but they just don't get there. The narrative also wraps up far too abruptly, which is impressive because the book had similar issues, but I really felt like the movie just ran out of money and had to kind of end. Add on the fact that the movie completely omits some of my favorite chapters and the result is a very underwhelming adaptation, even if it does have a neat visual style that is doing its best to recreate the manga, so this time the book is better. Katie, what's next?
• 1:36:21
  Speaker B: Up next, we are getting deeper into Spooky Season. We're going to be talking about something wicked this Way comes is a 1983 film based on the novel of the same name by Ray Bradbeer.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker A: That's fascinating.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker B: An author that we have not covered, not done, no.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker A: And I didn't know. He wrote a spooky move. A spooky book.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker B: He wrote all kinds of stuff.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker A: I know very little about.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker B: Known for Fahrenheit 451, but he wrote. He wrote all kinds of stuff.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker A: Very interesting. Cool. All right, that'll be our next episode, but. Or, well, our next main episode, but in one week's time, we'll be previewing Something Wicked this Way Comes and seeing what you all had to say about Uzumaki. And until that time, guys, gals, non binary pals and everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.