Exte: Hair Extensions

I have a good time watching works like this. Films like these use visual, and symbolic codes specifically directed to a certain dark piece of audience, who is willing to live a life in films outside the most widespread conventions, and accept what comes with that. One of the thing i like the most when watching such a piece in a public venue (usually crowded with the hard fans of these kinds of productions) is to observe how those fans respond to certain conventions inside the 'genre'. To me, because i only make occasional visits, it's something equivalent to visiting a foreign country, i observe how people behave, what's mood of the place i'm visiting.

Inside those alternative conventions, this is a good film, i suppose. At least it made it for me, to the point of wanting to know more work of this director. He has a vision, in the middle of this kind of capillary horror, he has an interesting concept which spreads clearly and embraces the film, as much as the hair embraces all the characters.

Hair as open channels. Hair as an element to connect people, to connect lives, and past lives. And to share death. It's an effective narrative device. The dead hair growing girl works as a kind of noir agent, someone who controls the action, but we are the whole time inside the device (we had to be to make the whole thing credible, and also because it was important for the creators and for the genre to explore the one-eyed dead girl). She manipulates through hair, and has a human puppet who delivers hair, and makes the whole thing work. That silly man is her hands in the street, giving death randomly. That agent believes all the way that he controls her, but we come to understand it's the other way around.

This clear storytelling strategy makes the film pleasant enough to me. It's a solid production work, the stop-motions were made with competence, and you will enjoy this if you like to explore interesting storytelling and if you're willing to accept, at least for 2 hours, the conventions of this corner in film universe (that if you're not already inside it).

My opinion: 3/5

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Really interesting film. Great story, interesting characters and a very different villain. I was curious as to how the film would turn out, assumed it would either be campy or gross out but actually turned out to be neither. Story was well paced, emotional and the actors were all enjoyable. Using something so mundane as the "monster" did make it quite hard to take the movie seriously at times and there's a few moments that I found very similar to Takashi Miikes style of absurdity, the film still came together and resulted in a really unique horror experience.

A film about killer hair extensions sounds ridiculous, and it is – but in a good way. EXTE comes across as a semi-serious spoof on the whole 'long haired' ghost sub-genre so beloved of Japanese cinema in the last fifteen years or so. At the same time, it stands alone and works as such a film in itself; there are plenty of moments that blur the line between weird and creepy and just plain surreal. To put it plainly, it's a film the likes of which I've never quite seen before.

The film kicks off with a cargo container being opened with the discovery that it's packed full of human hair – as well as a woman's corpse. A strange discovery, but the movie just gets stranger from there. The corpse is stolen by a fetishist who then goes on to sell the still-growing hair to various hairdressers, one of which is the 'Gilles de Rais' salon (named after a French serial killer). The heroine of the film is a hairdresser played by KILL BILL: VOLUME 1's Chiaki Kuriyama who must contend with an unloved child, an abusive sister and various job woes as well as this supernatural curse.

The plot is an excuse for a number of scenes in which the possessed hair goes about killing people. It seems to do this from the inside out; instead of bodies splitting open and blood coming out, hair comes out instead. The special effects are well achieved and the film as a whole has an offbeat tone that makes it highly enjoyable and a real breath of fresh air after the latest overly-familiar ghost story. The willingness to laugh at itself is the icing on a very bizarre cake.

Ever since the wave of Asian suspense films started in the late 90s, the horror genre regained its mainstream popularity. The Asian market spawned an overload of long-haired ghosts, the European market followed with some fine gorefests and nail-biters and across the ocean, Saw conquered the theaters and kick-started a whole circus of remakes, rip-offs and sequels. In short, horror is hot again.

In between all this genre work are still a few films that dare to be different, coming from directors that are more interested in the genre itself than the hype surrounding it. From the beginning, Sion Sono was a director who failed to fit the specific horror mold. Even though his first fan favorite, Suicide Circle, was marketed alongside films as Ringu and Ju-On, he never quite fitted in with the typical J-Horror wave. Apart from the social themes found in his films, it's the general weirdness that separates him from the generic horror template. With Ekusute, his latest effort, he's back to take revenge.

Ekusute is a film about hair. Long, dark, mysterious, Asian hair. One of the most commonly used elements in the Asian suspense wave. Needless to say, the storyline is as crazy as it is fun. When a girl is tortured and murdered for her organs, they also cut off her hair. Obviously, the hair doesn't agree and starts to grow back from her dead body. A local morgue attendant with an extreme fixation for hair finds out and takes her home with him. He starts using her hair for a hair extension business he's been running on the side, at which point the hair extensions go on a murdering rampage. Hell yeah! To make things "worse", Sono contacted Ren Osugi to play the part of the perverted hippie hair fetishist. I still remember the first time I watched Osugi in Hana-bi and Sonatine. Back then I figured he was a normal actor playing an uncharacteristically strange role. We are now several years later, and I know better. Osugi might look like a normal, older guy, in reality he is one of Japan's most insane actors, taking on whatever perverted, quirky and twisted role he can find. He goes completely over the top in Ekusute, giving the film its final nudge into insanity.

Ekusute is for the biggest part a parody on Asian horror flicks, playing around with a bunch of clichés and plot points. The whole hairy background story is crazy, Osugi's performance completely off the charts. Sono manages to be quite creative with the elements at hand, coming up with some interesting death scenes and original plays. But beside all the madness, the film works on another level. Sono integrates a side story about a tormented little kid which gives the film some extra grit and depth. It's the mix of all these elements that makes Ekusute quite dark and unique.

Visually, the film is quite unstable, with rather plain visuals in its dramatic moments. But whenever Sono plays the horror (or freak) card the visuals become top notch. The scenes in Osugi's room are marvelous, making excellent use of lighting and hair effects to create shots that linger on the eyes. In between scenes Sono even tries some Tsukamoto-like magic, with rapid-fire editing of images filled with hair and accompanied by distorted sounds. As a whole, the film is visually pleasing, though it would've been nicer if it had been a little more consistent in its style.

The film remains a strange mix of elements. In the beginning it looks like a simple parody on the J-Horror genre, but after a while other elements creep in which make the film more disturbing than it should have been on first sight. It never plays on scares, but still manages to become a dark and brooding film, topped with some craziness and surreal moments (mostly those with Osugi). It's a bit hard to recommend, as Sono's characteristic blend is rather unique and contains many tricks that might put people off. Still, I enjoy his films as they always succeed in bringing something new to the table.

Ekusute might feel like his most commercial film to date, but that is mostly a disguise. It's a fun, crazy and surprisingly eerie film. 4*/5*

Now, doesn't the premise of this movie sounds just awesome and interesting? A movie in which hair extensions attack and kill those that wear them, how could this movie not be awesome? Well, for one because it picks a totally strange and wrong approach to its subject.

The movie is a horror but only with its main premise. The movie itself picks a more dramatic approach, while the horror moments are mostly being comical and over-the-top ones. It's such a weird mixture of different genres, that doesn't quite work out that great or ever becomes very interesting to watch.

At first I actually thought this was going to be a parody of the Japanese horror genre but then suddenly it started to take a very serious and more straightforward approach with all of its dramatic story elements. I just don't know how to take this movie and I wonder if the film-makers themselves knew what direction they were going for.

Because the movie is mostly being a drama, it also means that it has a slow pace and buildup to it. Nothing wrong with that, as long as there is something good or interesting going on in the story as well. And that really isn't always the case in this movie. As a matter of fact, even though this is a well under 2 hours short movie, it still feels like a much longer one.

I feel that the movie could had truly benefited more from its horror. It should had done more with it, since it actually was the horror that still made this movie somewhat worthwhile. Yes, it has a ridicules concept but that's why it also works and becomes an original and interesting one with its horror. Also the effects looked pretty decent and some more killings or gore could had really spiced up things for this movie. The potential and possibilities were all there but the movie never really fully uses any it.

A strange mixture of far too many genres. It's not all that bad but it still remains a just too big of a waste, of some fine potential.

6/10

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