Thursday, October 25, 2007

London Film Fest Day 9 - EKESUTE/EXTE - HAIR EXTENSIONS

EXTE – HAIR EXTENSIONS is a body-shock J-horror that is more spoof than scary. Playing heavily on the audience’s familiarity with hair-fetishist horror like the JU-ON flicks, the director creates a central character who also has a Grudge. Kidnapped by thugs who harvested her organs and cut off her hair, she’s now a zombie corpse, held hostage by a hair-fetishist morgue attendant. He is entranced by the fact that, even in death, lustrous hair is growing from every one of her bodily orifices. He harvests the hair and sells it as hair extensions that murder their new owner. The movie rambles on for ninety minutes, raising more than a few belly-laughs with its absurdist visuals of chicks pulling yard long hairs from their eye-lids. It culminates in a final show-down between the nut-job, the hair-spewing zombie, our heroine (a kind-hearted hairdresser) and the munchkin she has rescued from an abusive mother. I’m not sure the movie adds up to much in the end. It’s certainly nicely produced but, unlike SEVERANCE, fails to deliver both laughs AND scares. Finally, it’s little more than an elaborate in-joke. Passing fun, but probably not worth more than a DVD rental.

EXTE - HAIR EXTENSIONS played London 2007 and was released in Japan earlier this year.

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