Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

ebiros2 This is the first movie I've seen with Chiaki Kuriyama playing the lead.Okay, how can all the hair appear the way they do ? The way they shows up is totally unbelievable. Then the Yamazaki character is also unbelievable. I didn't like the owner of the beauty salon at all either. She was totally selfish in that she indulged herself as the owner of the shop.This movie is a caricature of Japanese's propensity to be cruel to one another. The problem of "Ijime" (Treating others without mercy) is quite a phenomenon there, both in schools, and in society. This movie vividly depicts the society that has this nature at its core. Combined with above unbelievability, and also making jokes out of cruel situation makes it an awful combination.Everyone in this movie were so cold and selfish. I would have loved to see Kiyomi get her comeuppances.This movie really shows the bad side of Japan, like "Perawan" (Virgin) did for Indonesia. Recommended for viewing to see the bad side of another society.

Paul Magne Haakonsen Having watched Asian horror movies for some years now, the weird fetish with long hair is no surprise. But this movie, it was just a tad too much.The story is pretty stupid. A dead woman's hair keeps growing, and a lunatic guy keeps the body around and cuts the hair to use for hair extensions. He gives these extensions away to hair salons, and the hair kills people! What the... Hold it, back it up right here. Could it be any more stupid than this? Having seen lots and lots of Asian horror movies over the years, "Exte" takes the lead in having the most stupid and ridiculous storyline ever.As for the acting in the movie, well it was alright, although the movie suffered from a really bad dialogue. Looking aside from this, then the little girl, Miku Satô (playing Mami) was actually the one doing the best job in the movie. Most others were either over-doing it or suffered from horrendous dialogue to work with.There wasn't a single moment in the movie where I was scared or spooked, and truth be told, I almost dozed off at a point. The story takes forever to get you nowhere. And when the movie ends, you sit there with a very shallow feeling.If you like Asian horror movies, then there are far better ones out there. I decided to give "Exte" a try because it was labeled as Asian horror, but I was sorely disappointed. And I believe that even Asian people will not find this movie scary, because the usage of the hair and the sheer amount of it was just way too much. I managed to sit through the entire movie, and can honestly say that this DVD will be bagged and tagged, never to be seen again.

MisterWhiplash Hair Extensions works much better than expected. I mean, seriously, how much horror can one expect to come out of something as simple as hair? But the hair in this film is possessed, you see. It comes out through parts of the body once it attach's itself inside the host body: the person gets hair through fingernails, shooting up like weeds in a garden, through eyeballs, through a mouth, everywhere. And in this film, one of Sion Sono's better works for mainstream consumption, it's real success comes that it's not simply about a maniac guy who uses demon hair to kill people (he also sells hair extensions that have the roots that have Grudge-type problems, yes hair can remember). No, it's also a domestic drama involving a woman who works at a salon (the adorable Chiaki Kuriyama) whose sister is an abusive B-word to her daughter, who is traumatized for life at the age of four.For a little while (maybe the first 45 minutes) it's a wonder how these two stories, one with these people being killed by hair and this wacky guy in his home made out of hair-locks (and of course it's all lit in darks and greens), and the other with the salon girls and the drama with the sister and the daughter, will intersect. Once it does, the movie gears into being totally absorbing, and Sono is very creative with how he stages his horror set pieces. There aren't *that* many kills, at least not as many as one might expect from the director of Suicide Club. It's more about staging a setting and place, how it's lit, how the person in the shot moves about. It's not about jump scares, and it's not about some of the simpler modes that sometimes happen in "grudge" movies. In this film, a seemingly dead body can still f*** with the living. The acting is also quite good, which is important as a lot of the film's drama rests on the sister and daughter and how Chiaki's character has to try hard just to reach out to the little girl (even more difficult after a particularly traumatic scene she sees, which we wisely only see some of before the big reveal). It's gory, which is to be expected, but I was amazed by the suspense that Sono was able to draw out of scenes, even in the climax which veers into over-the-top territory with its antagonist. Oh, and the movie is surprisingly funny to boot, mostly involving a cat who suddenly appears in scenes posed next to a statue outside at night (or just, you know, around), or how the villain sidles his way into the salon with his precious hair extensions. Only one moment that should be painfully obvious to anyone but isn't seen by the protagonist makes on do a face palm. The rest of the film is fun, effective and leaves an impression as art merged with genre.

Polaris_DiB Upon seeing this movie on the rental shelf, all shiny and brand new, I couldn't help but think, "Wow, that seems a little too 'J-horror' for Sion Sono. I hope this isn't really that bad." Apparently a lot of other reviewers on this site had the same initial doubt. For those of you who haven't been in tune with where those annoying girl-with-long-hair Hollywood remakes have been coming from, "J-horror" refers to a sort of sub-sub-genre of popularized Japanese horror movie usually about ghosts, hauntings, and attracting American audiences. No, seriously, the grand majority of the films dubbed "J-horror" are really not all that different from American horror films because they were inspired by American horror films. Many of them fall also under the "Asian Extreme" label that was practically invented by Tartan DVD, which is basically horror and action movies, only, hence the title, more extreme. Caution should be used when attempting to get into those movies, but there is some good stuff out there. Look for Sono, Takashi Miike, Chan Wook Park, and Shinya Tsukomoto.Anyway, Sion Sono is much more well-known for the epic "Suicide Club", a consistently dazzling and nearly impenetrable thriller that, like all good horror, comments painstakingly on the social situation its filmed in. Other movies like the follow up Noriko's Dinner Table and the metanarrative Strange Circus stamp Sono down as a director to pay attention to. A movie called "Hair Extensions" just doesn't seem like his thing--but it is. Or rather, he makes it his.This movie's plot is often described as being about a hair stylist having to fight against evil hair extensions that kill each other, but it's more like two different sensibilities ultimately clashing. The one sensibility is that very campy J-horror realm of a cursed corpse exacting revenge upon the world via hair that grows out of literally every wound and orifice, distributed by a strange fetishist who likes his fair share of silly disguises. The second aspect is the comedic-melodramatic story of young Yuko, stylist-in-training, who gets pulled out of her happy existence as a hopeful up-and-coming 20 something who likes quirks such as narrating aloud her own life when her abusive hipster sister drops off her (the sister's) little daughter Mami on Yuko's doorstep. Yuko is forced into fending for her new charge, who she quickly grows fond of, though she has to struggle against the young girl's altered perceptions of reality rended from being abused by her mother. Meanwhile, the strange hair fetishist and Yuko meet via the hair salon, people start dying, and bungling cops have no ability to understand what's actually going on. Eventually Yuko has to defend little Mami not only from an abusive mother but from violent, murderous hair. AND ITS AWESOME...Sono is one of those gifted filmmakers who can lead the audience through horror, tragedy, comedy, and melodrama at sudden and unexpected turns, never missing a beat. Some parts of "Hair Extensions" seem cheaper than others, but he's not afraid to let the ridiculous be ridiculous and the serious be affecting. This isn't exactly his greatest work, but some parts noticeably stand out. The scene where the sister and her lover come into contact (literally) with the hair extensions is one of the most shocking, disturbing, amazing, and hilarious--and sudden--scenes in cinema. Yuko's relationship with Mami is more than just a caring adult to a hurt child, it's complicated and Yuko doesn't always know how to handle herself. Weirdly enough, "Hair Extensions" is both the most absurd and most real of Sono's work, with a fully fleshed out and functioning world supporting some of the most random acts of carnage ever shot. Even if this movie doesn't appeal to you intellectually, it certainly has sensationalistic thrills. The funny thing is that the reverse is true, too.--PolarisDiB