4.5/5 Stars: ‘Uzumaki’ is a New Adult, Horror Manga by Junji Ito and translated by Yuji Oniki; ‘Uzumaki’ is gorgeous in the way a tarantula is: hardly fitting traditional ideals of beauty, but still displaying a dark elegance. The book has an overarching narrative but begins as a series of short, relatively self-contained chapters. As the Manga progresses, this narrative becomes more and more prevalent, until the final 'act,' where each chapter leads directly into the next until the very end. While the nature of having the Manga follow specific characters in a small setting almost necessitates tying things together in a final conclusion, the comic is at its best in its first two thirds, when the spiral is more a connecting theme than a connecting plot device. Horror certainly can work in the longer form, but there’s a reason why so many of the best horror stories are short stories. The last third, which serves almost as one larger story, loses some steam as it progresses, but thankfully manages to pull itself together for a solid, if not satisfying, conclusion. The other two-thirds of the Manga, however, is pure horror excellence. Mainstream Horror movies often emphasise the shocking side of horror, using jump-scares to give audiences a rush of endorphins that keep them coming back for more. 'Uzumaki,' by contrast, more often than not leans toward the methodical side of horror — though Ito can certainly pull off the frightening surprise when he wants to. The comic is at its best when Ito spends page after page of adding layer after layer of dread, until the tension finally breaks and the reader is faced with that which they feared. It’s a testament to the captivating quality of Ito’s horror that the reader feels unable to escape, despite, of course, having complete control over the book. The other quality of horror that Ito revels in throughout 'Uzumaki' is the grotesque. There are a few stories in the book, such as 'The Snail,' that isn’t quite what one would call “scary,” and yet are nonetheless horrifying in the way they make the reader’s stomach roil. This isn’t simple torture porn, though; there’s an inventiveness to 'Uzumaki’s' more disgusting parts, often laced with irony, that keeps it from seeming a simple exercise in poor taste. While 'Uzumaki' isn’t necessarily a book everyone should own, it is a must-have for horror fans.