Uzumaki (2024)

Upon watching the first episode, I was convinced that this would finally be the Junji Ito adaptation fans have been waiting for. In horror and manga circles, his work is borderline legendary, but previous adaptations have been mixed quality at best to downright atrocious (looking at you Gyo). Unfortunately, this series is a mixed bag. This is probably the highest fidelity adaptation I’ve seen of a comic, recreating the look and feel of the manga with rotoscope animation and lavish attention to every detail in the artwork. But, whether different teams worked on different segments of episodes, the animation quality doesn’t remain entirely consistent. While the series manages to cover most of the different chapters, pacing is one of the series’ biggest flaws. While certain segments can be quite effective, the entire production races through beats and sequences that should be allowed much more time to settle and breathe, and short-changes quite a few. The last chapters in particular feel utterly rushed, with no time to allow the unsettling visuals and coda to really give an impact. Ultimately, this is still a very good adaptation, featuring some genuinely disturbing body horror, fever-dream surrealism, and disquieting cosmic horror all suffused in bleakness. But it is far from what the look and feel promises as a perfect adaptation and lacks the impact of the source. One can’t help but to think an additional episode and slightly more time in development would have delivered what is missing here. 

B