London Film Festival – Exte

 

Well, my life is complete – I’ve seen my first Asian hair extension horror film. No, I’m not making it up – the movie is called ‘Exte‘ and was my second picture seen as part of the London Film Festival. I now have a new director’s works to plunder as this was a very effective little movie, I hope his back catalogue is as interesting.

Yamazaki is an eccentric mortician with an unusual fetish for women’s hair, as the film opens he steals the corpse of a young woman who has been brutally tortured and murdered at the hands of unknown assailants. Ensconced back in his modest flat, he is delighted to see that her hair continues to grow at a astonishing rate. His paths cross with our heroine Yuka when he sells the salon she works in a selected of the titular hair extensions from his secret partner. As the staff and clients of the salon start to implant the haunted extensions, the body count starts to mount up… 

 

Only the Japanese can get away with this. An absolutely preposterous idea is successfully delivered, mostly because I think the film-makers are aiming for a sly parody of the Japanese horror (or ‘J-Horror‘) genre rather than a full-on gore drenched picture although it does have a couple of creepy moments.  Some of the genre’s familiar elements are here – tortured female spirit seeking revenge from beyond the grave, quiet, tension building scenes of characters approaching menacing locations, although it lacks the grotesque charm of Takashi Miike or Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Like myself, most of the audience was laughing at what was unfolding on-screen, albiet in that slightly hysterical, nervous way. No doubt Tartan video will get the rights to it and have copies out early next year.