High school student Kirie Goshima's first glimpse that something is awry in the small town of Kurouzu-cho comes when her boyfriend Shuichi Saito'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 it. 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. It is not long before the entire town is infected by the otherworldly spirals. Tamura, a reporter, is intrigued by Shuichi's father's
suicide and becomes obsessed with the case. Meanwhile, Shuichi'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 Shuichi 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 Kirie's high school, a student named Katayama begins to walk at a snail's pace, dripping in a slimy substance 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. Kirie's classmate, Sekino, 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 ways. Eventually, the entire town succumbs to the curse of the spiral—Kirie'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 Sekino'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 Kirie, 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 Kirie and Shuichi decide to search for Kirie's father, Shuichi's body twists into a spiral-like contortion. He crawls towards Kirie, asking her to "become a spiral too". Refusing to let Shuichi back to his side, Kirie flees, and her fate is left unknown. ==Cast==