Exte or Hair Extension: A Japanese Horror Movie Review

Halloween is nearly coming, so I decided yesterday to watch a horror movie and search it in Youtube.com.

I love watching Asian horror movies.  While searching, I spotted this movie, Exte.  I initially got interested.

Exte is a 2007 Japanese horror film written and directed by Sion Sono, and stars Chiaki Kuriyama, Ren Osugi, and Megumi Satō. The plot involves an aspiring hair dresser (Kuriyama) who becomes the infatuation of a tricophilic man who sells hair extensions to nearby hair salons. The source of the hair comes from the stolen corpse of a girl whose dead body continues to grow beautiful and voluminous black hair that comes alive, driving those who use the extensions insane or killing them.

Here's an excerpt trailer of this movie.
Video Credits to Youtube.com: HopeAndCore

In a shipping container, customs agents discover a gigantic amount of human hair used as materials for hair extensions, along with the dead body of a young girl with a shaved head. The corpse is elated to the morgue, where the results of the autopsy determine that the girl's internal organs have been harvested, the victim of a black market of human organ smuggling. The morgue night watchman, a closet tricophile named Yamazaki (Ren Osugi), is obsessed by her beautiful hair and steals the body away to his home. He finds that the girl's body has begun to grow hair—from her head, vacant eye sockets, tongue, and various open wounds. He is enchanted and encourages it to grow, harvesting it to make hair extensions to sell. 

Yuko (Chiaki Kuriyama) is a young apprentice hair stylist at a local hair salon. One day, her irresponsible older sister, Kiyomi (Tsugumi), dumps her eight-year-old daughter, Mami (Miku Sato) and gave it to Yuko Mami shows signs of abuse like bruises. 

One morning in the street, Yamazaki spots Mami trying to find Yuko's hair salon and finds her hair exceedingly awesome and beautiful. He helps Mami and introduces himself. When they found Yuko's place, he again enchanted more with Yuko's hair.  He returns the next day, explaining that he sells hair extensions. The workers at the salon are impressed by the hair's quality and try them out. That night, Kondo, one of Yuko's coworkers who tried on the extensions, is killed when the hair begins sprouting from her eyes, head, and mouth.

Kiyomi tricked Mami again and steal more clothing including the hair extension and dragged Mami back to her boyfriend's house.  Again, the hair slaughter Kiyomi and her boyfriend.

Yuko participates in a hair dressing workshop, she use Mami as her model and used the hair extension she got from Yamazaki. The workshop is interrupted by the detectives, asking and linking the crime to the hair.  When the detectives already leaving, Yuko realizes that the hair extensions are the linking major factor in the different deaths and immediately when home to Mami. While Mami is playing, hair begins to flow into the apartment. Yuki rushes Mami to safety, but is strangled to death by the hair and Mami faints. 

Yuko enters the hair-filled apartment and tries to free Mami, but is choked unconscious by the hair. Yamazaki arrives in time and commands the hair to spare Mami and Yuko and takes them back to his living hair-covered home. Detectives found out that Yamazaki is the lead suspect of the crime.  Yamazaki explains that after her organs were harvested, the girl's hair continued grow, carrying on her grudge against society. 

He desires for Mami and Yuko, to stay with him and the deathly body forever. Yuko rubbish him and to defend Mami, begins cruel Yamazaki, enraging him and causing him to tell that he willfully permissible the hair to possess him, his tongue hairy and his blood and limbs replaced by hair. In anger, he cuts some of Mami's hair, which begins to bleed. While in wonder of what he has just seen, the blood and Yamazaki's smiling cause the corpse to correlate him with the man who killed her and she abruptly sits up, immobilizing him and slicing him to pieces with strands of hair, killing him while Yuko and Mami escape. Her grudge satisfied, the hair disappears and the girl's body returns to normal, finally at peace. Having escaped, Yuko and Mami sit on the beach and Yuko asks Mami to live together with her eternally, which Mami gladly accepts.

Now here is my rating:

STORY: 8

CHARACTERS: 9

COHERENCE: 9

DEPTH: 6

MUSIC: 5

VISUAL EFFECTS: 8

POPULARITY: 8

RECOMMENDATION: 9

Total:  7.75