Exte: Hair Extensions

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Sion Sono directs. Hiro'o Yanagida behind the camera. Sion Sono scores. Junichi Ito cuts. Produced in Japan. Dialogue in Japanese.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 1Released 19 years ago.
• 2Directed by Sion Sono, shot by Hiro'o Yanagida. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 3Original score by Sion Sono. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
• 4Editor Junichi Ito shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 5Chiaki Kuriyama and Ren Osugi and Megumi Sato carry the top of the cast.
• 6Marketing tagline: "Wear them, and they will come after you…".
• 7IMDB entry: tt0904049 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

The technical file

Cinematography

Hiro'o Yanagida

Original score

Sion Sono

Editing

Junichi Ito

Production design

Katsuhiro Fukuzawa

Makeup / hair

Yoshihiro Nishimura

VFX supervisor

Takashi Tanaka

Runtime

108 min · 1h 48m

Aspect ratio (typical)

1.37:1 (Academy)

Status

Released

Original language

JA

IMDB

Exte: Hair Extensions (2007) ↗

Also by

Sion Sono

• 
  When I Grow Up

  2004 · ★ 9.0
• 
  Love Exposure

  2008 · ★ 7.9
• 
  State of Emergency

  2020 · ★ 7.8
• 
  Wind

  1998 · ★ 7.5
• 
  Why Don't You Play in Hell?

  2013 · ★ 7.3
• 
  BAD FILM

  2012 · ★ 7.3

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  Hair Extensions (Trailer)

  Trailer

Community reviews

What people are saying

• Kai2019-12-18
  ★ 8/10

  I watched this for Sion Sono's birthday and I should treat myself on directors' birthdays more often, goddamn. Exte was easily my "most uncomfortable" watch of 2019. I've only watched one other film of Sono's, so I knew he was very good when it came to gore, but I didn't know what to expect from him when it came to ghosts and ghouls. Dear Christ, I will NEVER be getting hair extensions for the rest of my life. Before I go into it, do remember, this was 2007. The CGI and such are not going to be amazing and top of the line. Watch this as you'd have watched a film you were going to see in the cinema in 2007 for the best impression of this film. With a very unique plot - I for one, have never come across a horror film personally that has hair extensions as the main "evil" object. This has drawn me in for quite a while and it's not hard to see why this has become a very influential horror film. Starting off very serious and dark this film promises quite a lot at the start. This does fade after a little while and we become a bit more upbeat and a little more fun. I'm not faulting the film for this - it must be pretty hard to keep a film about hair extensions murdering people to a degree of seriousness - however, it really does pick up after a while. Once the spooky things start going down, we get uncomfortable scenes of body horror (I wouldn't really call them body gore, but either way) that made me feel a little queasy and very uneasy. I was rubbing at my eyes, picking my lips and trying my best not to pause the movie and leave it for a while and return to it. Sono creates such a stunning piece of art that is so uneasy and makes the viewer squirm. Although the plot doesn't seem to make much sense. There's two different plot lines going on at once - the investigation of the woman murdered and a secondary plot following Yuko - and I don't think that the investigation got much attention once it first switches to Yuko. Both plots do eventually overlap and come together, but I just don't think this was done as 100% as it could have been. Everything comes to a close well, but I did find myself wishing for JUST a little bit more from Sono to bring this up just one or two notches. (And that bloody song is gonna be stuck in my head all day...) The ending is pretty vague and more of a horror-comedy piece than a horror, but that's who Sion Sono is, so definitely a plus in this situation. This all said, I do very much love this film. It's spooky, it's unsettling, it has definitely made me a little uneasy at the idea of having hair extensions. The atmospheric creation of Sono is something that I truly appreciate. The 2000s of Japanese horror have a legacy for their moments of unease and Exte is no different. Truly unnerving, extremely uncomfortable and breath hitching, this film truly is one of the gold films of the 2000-2010 Japanese iconic ghost horrors. All of the cast were amazing (and I can't imagine some of these scenes were easy to record either), and it really helped develop the film further. Again, I will never be having hair extensions and secondly, I think I have a new found fear of hair in general. Some of these scenes were just too creepy. (My only qualm is... doesn't Yuko have to like legally adopt Mami... not just move her into her place?)

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• 

  Toei Company

  JP

Key crew

• ProducerTsugio Hattori
• ProducerMakoto Okada
• Visual Effects SupervisorTakashi Tanaka
• Special Effects Makeup ArtistYoshihiro Nishimura
• Production DesignKatsuhiro Fukuzawa
• Special EffectsYoshihiro Nishimura
• EditorJunichi Ito

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• japan
• irreverent

Release history · US

When it landed

• Theatrical2007-02-17

Also known as

International titles

• Exte: Hair ExtensionsUS
• EkusuteJP
• Ekusute (Exte: Hair Extensions)ES
• 美髮屍TW
• 美发尸CN
• 엑스테: 헤어 익스텐션즈KR