Exte: Hair Extensions

It’d be easy to say that director Sion Sono lampoons the Japanese horror motif of the ghosty girl with the long, long hair in this creepy and bizarro film about haunted, murderous hair extensions. But Sono takes the whole, uh, hair-raising element to such an extreme that it rises above satire with chilling and deftly shot set pieces of hair strangling, flinging, and burying its victims. Two cops open a cargo truck brimming with human hair and find snarled in the midst of it a dead woman whose organs have been harvested for the black market. A hair-obsessed morgue attendant (the eerie Ren Osugi) pilfers the body, which continues to grow massive amounts of hair from her head, her scars, and her eye sockets. He sells the hair off as extensions at a local salon where Yuko (Kill Bill’s knockout Chiaki Kuriyama) is learning the trade. Soon enough, Yuko, her villainous party-girl sister, and her innocent young niece are all entangled in the vengeful tresses. 108 Minutes | Brattle: July 18-21