THE WIG is a dull and lifeless South Korean horror film about a cancer patient who finds herself cursed when wearing a haunted wig. As ridiculous as that premise sounds, this film is played totally straight, with nary a laugh or attempt at humour in sight; as a result it's a macabre and unfortunately po-faced attempt at the supernatural that falls flat from the beginning.
The Japanese took the same premise and came up with EXTE, a kooky and offbeat addition to the genre, but THE WIG is nothing like that film. Instead, it's content to go through the motions without innovation, and it adds nothing we haven't seen before in the 'long haired ghost' type genre. There's lots of slow-burning tension, a handful of deaths at the hands of some supernatural entity or other, and a lot of thumb-twirling as you wait for something to happen. Other than at the over-the-top ending, nothing does.
The decision to make one of the central characters a mute was a poor one, because it makes the film even slower and a lot of the dialogue feel irrelevant. The acting is nothing to write home about and the direction is passable at best, but the movie's worst crime is the script, which fails to contribute even one memorable moment in an overlong running time.
The Japanese took the same premise and came up with EXTE, a kooky and offbeat addition to the genre, but THE WIG is nothing like that film. Instead, it's content to go through the motions without innovation, and it adds nothing we haven't seen before in the 'long haired ghost' type genre. There's lots of slow-burning tension, a handful of deaths at the hands of some supernatural entity or other, and a lot of thumb-twirling as you wait for something to happen. Other than at the over-the-top ending, nothing does.
The decision to make one of the central characters a mute was a poor one, because it makes the film even slower and a lot of the dialogue feel irrelevant. The acting is nothing to write home about and the direction is passable at best, but the movie's worst crime is the script, which fails to contribute even one memorable moment in an overlong running time.