Film Review: Exte: Hair Extensions (2006)

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SYNOPSIS:

When a mortician discovers that a girl’s mutilated corpse grows prodigious amounts of hair, he sells the locks to a beauty salon for use as hair extensions. But the dead girl’s spirit has cursed the hair, which begin to attack the women who wear it. How many must die before the hirsute rampage relents? Genuinely horrific, this captivating film was directed by Sion Sono and stars Chiaki Kuriyama, Ren Osugi and Megumi Sato.

REVIEW:

Upon stumbling on a cargo container, 2 police men open it due to a pungent smell emanating from its hull. Filled to the brim with hair, they notice a dead body stuffed in the hair and turn it over to the medics. After investigation, It appears that the body was carved out and stuffed with hair for some unknown reason. Meanwhile, we follow the day to day with the local hairdressers in town as they go about there lives to further there hair studies. The film continues as different lives intertwine surrounding the issue of hair.

A morgue worker named Yamasaki passes his time by stealing hair from the dead and selling it as extensions to the local markets.

Yuko a young hairstylist, takes in her sister’s daughter Mami to keep her from her abusive mothers wrath. All these things play out and come together surrounding the corpses hair and increase in intensity as time passes and the stories become more entwined.

Yamazki steals the corpse after realizing that the hair continues to grow even in its deceased state. This discovery helps his hair business immensely as he goes about town selling the cut locks of hair. As with most Asian films, the hair is cursed and inflicts psychological hallucination to its wearers as well as physical harm. Most of the hallucinations seem to be the disturbing events that lead to her death.

The reason for this outbreak of hair lunacy stems from the original victim who was put thru indescribable horrors leading to her death. A subject to organ stealing, hair ripping and other unmentionables left her dead body with a pretty vengeful spirit. This spirit is who haunts her growing stems from her dead corpse and the borrowers of her locks as beauty aids. The result is pretty “horror-terrific”! The finale of this film need to be seen as hair sports out of places not meant for hair growth.

Now on to the glorious details, as we’ve seen in many Asian Horror films..hair seems to be a common factor. I’m really not sure why, maybe I’ll feature an article on it someday. In any case, the hair special FX are nothing short of amazing in this film. There are a few scenes where the hair strangles, rips, lifts, invades, grows…etc that are some of the best Asian hair work I’ve seen on screen! I know what your thinking, hair isn’t too scary right? Well if it isn’t, it surely does its job in this film. One of my fav scenes involves the extensions spraying out of the sculpt only to lift its victim in the air and drop her…….pretty cool to say the least.

The amount of hair in this film is incredible as it fills entire rooms and spreads throughout like vines. To further promote this amazing piece of work, it is the inventiveness like this that really steals the show. Part camera trickery and part cgi, Exte: is another important part of the Asian film history that focuses on the pain of tortured spirits and the effect is has on reality.

Exte: Hair Extensions (2006)