IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

mraculeated The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

circ9 I generally LIKE Sion Sono's work, but this movie was completely retarded. But sadly, not retarded enough to make it entertainingly retarded. I just sat, mouth agape, wondering when it would end. The plot makes only a whisper of sense. I think it was intended to be campy. I mean, haunted hair extensions - how could it not be? But the humor, such as it was, fell flat. Not funny. Not scary. Not gory. I would say perhaps Sono was a hired hand on this project, but he appears to have written this boring trash as well. I still need to fill a couple more lines, what else is there to say? I suppose I could finish by saying: Better luck next time, Sono-san.

Onderhond 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*

Coventry "Body Bags", a rather weak early 90's horror anthology promoted by John Carpenter, featured one segment with Stacy Keach replacing his balding head with a murderous hairdo. The little story was unbelievably stupid because human hair simply isn't the least bit scary. Sion Sono ("Suicide Club") also clearly realizes the concept of killing hair is goofy, but somehow his natural sense of creativity and knowledgeable approach of the genre resulted in a very entertaining horror/parody film. During his introduction of the movie – at the Belgium Horror Festival – Sion Sono vividly explained how he found his inspiration in observing young Japanese schoolgirls and their fascination for random and silly fashion trends. According to Sion Sono, the idea of braiding someone's real hair into your own without knowing exactly what happened to this person could lead to a terrifically tense horror formula. The person could be cursed, brutally murdered or be a psychopathic serial killer for all you know! Would you want to wear his/her hair in yours? Interesting idea, indeed, but it definitely raises a few plotting issues. How do you use ordinary human hair as an instrument of murder, for example, and how do you continuously maintain the link with the hair's original "carrier". Well, for all these questions – and many more – Sono came up with answers that balance perfectly between supernatural horror and plainly absurd comedy.Custom agents discover the body of a dead girl whose eyes and organs were surgically removed, presumably by the organ mafia. Out of pure and furious anger, her restless spirit still causes the body hair to grow fast and in enormous proportions. The totally demented coroner sees a profitable business and starts selling the girl's hair to salons. Needless to say the extensions promptly take control over the victims, hair starts growing from all bodily openings and the fashionable girls die a very painful death. Most of the horrors take place inside the Gilles de Rais salon, where the ambitious Yuko struggles with work pressure as well as private problems. "Hair Extensions" is a wonderfully odd but original mixture of horror styles and – strangely enough – the contradictory themes never really collide with each other. The movie is successively scary, comical, gory, downright absurd and scary again and, as a viewer, you simply go with the flow. Still, the absolute greatest aspects in "Hair Extensions" – even greater than the unique sense of humor - are the literally stunning and fabulous make-up effects and imaginative visuals. The multiple images of eerie black hair growing out of eye sockets and infected cutting wounds are quite icky and the absolute highlight of the movie shows a girl's hair pinning itself like a spider's web onto the ceiling. Sion Sono clearly dedicated a lot of time and effort to his character drawings. Yuko, her obnoxious sister Kiyomi and her little niece Mami are properly elaborated characters and Gunji – the deranged coroner – is the most fascinatingly eccentric freak I've ever seen in an Asian horror movie. The lovely lead actress Chiaki Kuriyama continues her unstoppable series of success roles, as avid genre fanatics will definitely recognize her from highlights like "Battle Royale" and "Kill Bill".

jmaruyama Possessed body parts are nothing new to the film horror genre. There have been a number of movies about cursed eyes (The Eye), demonic hands (Idle Hands, The Hand), sinister facial grafts (Tanin No Kao), reanimated human tissue (Re-Animator) and haunted arms (Body Parts) but none have been stranger than Sono Sion's latest creepy thriller "Exte" which has to be a first in the annals of movie horror with its subject matter - cursed hair.Starring Kuriyama Chiaki (she of the big nose and "Olive Oyl" lanky figure), the movie is a bizarre tale of a vengeful spirit of a young girl, who was the victim of illegal organ harvesting, left to die but only to have her restless spirit manifest itself as living "demonic" hair which would possess its victims (by entering into their body) and manipulate the host's own hair follicles to often deadly effects (rapid growth which would result in strangulation and suffocation).While the plot may sound utterly ridiculous, "Exte" is a surprisingly effective horror film with several moments of genuine terror.Kuriyama plays Mizushima Yuko, a fledgling beautician in a small coastal Japanese town. She is training with a local stylist(Yamamoto Mirai) at a beauty salon called "Gilles de Rais" (odd that a salon would be named after a French aristocratic serial killer and murder of children).Her world would soon be turned upside down by the sudden appearance of her young niece, Mami (Sato Miku) who is the daughter of her older sister Kiyomi (Tsugumi). Mami has been abandoned by her witch of a mother and now Yuko and her roommate Yuki (Sato Megumi) must care for her. They will soon discover that she has also been severely abused by Kiyomi, to the point that Mami is emotionally and psychologically scarred.As Yuko tries to deal with this personal problem. A gruesome discovery is made at one of the local shipping docks. A dead body of a young girl is found in a shipping container filled with human hair. Upon further examination, the body is discovered to be filled with human hair. A hair fetish "Otaku" Yamazaki Gunji (Osugi Ren) who happens to work in the morgue, steals the body and soon realizes that this body can rapidly grown hair not only from the head but also from various open orifices (the mouth, eyes, ears, open cuts). He soon decides (or rather is compelled) to sell this special hair to the local hair salons as "exte" (hair extensions).Unfortunately, these "exte" have a life of their own and soon possess and kill the women that the hair is attached to. Yamazaki is also driven crazy by the haunted hair and soon seeks out other victims with beautiful hair, with Yuko and Mami being such women. Yuko must not only protect Mami from Gunji but also from Kiyomi who has returned to take back Mami.The screenplay by Sono(Kimyo Na Circus, Noriko No Shokutaku) and Adachi Masaki (who served as Second Director on movies such as "Ju-On:The Grudge" and "Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara) is a hopelessly contrived story but one that is done surprisingly well and with straight-faced seriousness. It is amazing how creepy some of the SFX effects work with the hair and albeit there are some scenes which border on the absurd and cartoonish the overall horror effects are shocking.One nagging plot point however is never really explained. We never really know who the young girl is in the container and while there are flashbacks of her ordeal before her death, Sono refuses to give us any details of her life or explanations as to how she is able to reanimate and control her body hair. It's an irritatingly MacGuffin contrivance but one that doesn't really kill the entertainment value of the film.Kuriyama plays her part well and is quite good as Yuko. Child actress Sato Miku is definitely the standout with her portrayal of the abused Mami. While Osugi's manic and over-the-top villainy as Yamazaki is pure camp, the real chilling performance is Tsugumi's "mother from hell" Kiyomi. She is the true monster in this movie and her "Mommy Dearest" abusiveness to Mami will definitely spark much hatred for her character.J-Dorama fans will recognize a lot of familiar faces in this Toei movie with Natsuo Yuna, Ebisu Yoshikazu, Sakuma Mayu all having small parts/cameos in the movie."Exte" is nowhere near as good as "Juon", "Ring" or other seminal supernatural J-Horror films of late but is still an effective thriller. Despite the hopelessly unbelievable plot, sometimes cartoonish special effects, and Osugi's tongue-in-cheek performance, the film somehow works.