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.
