Asian horror is obsessed with thei mage of long black-haired female ghosts. It's almost laughable it's such a predictable cliche.

The Wig (Gabal, 2005) is a first-time director's Korean take on the Japanese style of horror. It takes the "spooky hair" to the extreme of doing away with the pale woman ghost & just having hair as a separate living entity.

And the film was very nearly distributed in the west as Scary Hair which no doubt would've guaranteed howls of laughter at everything the director-writer believed to be his best bits.

This wig was made from the hair of a suicide victim & has a vampiric nature.

Su-hyeon (Min-seo Chae), a sunken-eyed girl with cancer, is bald from chemo therapy, & seemingly not long for this world.

She's given a new lease on life when the wig is brought to her. When first she dons the wig she seems to become instantly healthy, except for her horrific visions of the hair strangling its victims.

In one sequence the wig appears suddenly to a truck driver, causing a road accident. Su-hyeon's sister Ji-hyeon (Seon Yu) is involved in the accident & gets impaled through the throat. She survives but is thereafter mute, or speaks without making sound.

Slick & well-made though The Wig happens to be, it's also plodding & dull. Excellent cinematography & skilled acting does not keep the theme of a vampire wig from being rather silly.

Su-hyun begins aging quickly. Her mute sister knows it's the fault of the evil wig. The climax of brutally murdering one's possessed sister could've been powerful stuff, but the ghost revealing its identity then having a knock-down drag-out for "love" is just downright moronic.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl