Exte: Hair Extensions

Sion Sono | 2007 | 108 min | Japan

A young girl is found inside a massive shipping container, dead, without many of her vital organs, and with a VERY full head of hair. So full that her hair fills the shipping container. Yamazaki, a worker at the morgue notices that even after her corpse has been shaved by the coroner, her hair begins to grow back. A hair fanatic, he can't help himself; he takes the girl's body home with him and puts it a hammock that hangs in his apartment.

Meanwhile, a young aspiring hair stylist named Yuko (Battle Royale and Kill Bill's Chiaki Kuriyama) is training with great enthusiasm to become one of the best stylists in all of Japan. She's given the responsibility of looking after her young niece, Yuki, however, while her bad seed sister spends time with her dirtbag boyfriend. When Yuko discovers that Yuki has been abused, she has to juggle her studies and helping Yuki overcome the damage that her mother has caused her.

Yamazaki decides he can make some money if he makes hair extensions from the hair of his hammocked beauty, and starts selling them around town (out of a bird cage). The hair, we soon find out is filled with the angry spirit (or something like that) of the murdered girl, and anyone who puts the extensions in their hair becomes violent.

Obviously later, Yamazaki, Yuko, and Yuki's paths all cross through the hair extensions and CGI hair violence ensues to a satisfying climax.

Exte doesn't have much to offer in the way of story, and could have been thirty minutes shorter, but the acting is all around solid, and its effects sequences are inventive gross out fun that if you have long hair might stay with you longer than you want them to.