Junji Ito and his work are extremely overrated in my opinion. I've read Uzumaki, Smashed and Shiver and the only thing they have going for them is the freaky visuals. The artwork looks great when he goes full on body horror and can go overboard with the freaky factor but the art during the calm periods and build up is very generic.

The writing is also kind of crap sometimes, the characters are all the most generic, one-dimensional protagonists ever. Which yes for the anthology manga kind of makes sense because the stories are so short but Uzumaki, which is one big story, had no excuse for its crappy characters.

They're not even scary whatsoever, the freaky imagery very occasionally made me unnerved but people who call it "nightmare fuel" are highly exaggerating and need to grow up. He's creative and the stories have great concepts but these manga didn't really blow my mind.