Long haired Asian ghost girls have been a staple of the horror genre for years now thanks to the success of films like Ring And Kairo. Many of these films have been interesting and well made, but just as many have felt like cheap knock offs of the more successful entries in the cannon of modern Asian horror. The Wig, which takes the ghost girl out of the equation and concentrates primarily on the long haired part of the equation, is sadly in the later camp.

The film follows a young woman named Soo-hyun who has just been released from the hospital where she's been undergoing some very extensive chemotherapy treatment to deal with the cancer that's been affecting her as of late. Her sister, knowing that Soo-hyun will be feeling more than a little glum after undergoing such rigorous treatment, has her heart in the right place when she buys her a wig. After all, Soo-hyun lost all of her hair during the treatment and will probably not want to have to be any more self conscious than she already is.

At first, the wig seems to have been a great idea. Soo-hyun seems perky and happy to have it and it would appear that her self confidence has been given a decent boost as well. Things take a strange turn shortly thereafter, however, as Soo-hyun starts to see strange and very disturbing visions and her behavior becomes increasingly erratic. She stops taking her medication and starts acting like a bit of a tramp whenever she's got the wig on. As soon as the wig is removed, however, she tends to lie in the fetal position on the floor and bleed from her nose. As luck would have it, the wig that Soo-hyun is so unusually attracted has been made from the hair of a dead woman who wasn't too keen on passing into the great beyond and who wants to take over Soo-hyun's body to use as her own.

First things first - no matter how hard director Won Shin-Yeon might try to infuse his film with horror and suspense, this is a movie about a killer wig. While the story is clever in a couple of ways and it approaches the subject matter with far more serious intent than it probably should have, the very idea of a killer wig is... goofy. If that weren't problem enough in and of itself, the storyline jumps around far too often for its own good, bombarding us with flashback after flashback and resulting in a rather confusing first half that doesn't do a particularly good job of holding audience attention.

To the film's credit, it is quite well shot and it looks very good throughout even if it is a very dark picture both visually and thematically. Some of the murder scenes are handled quite well and although the obviously CGI created wig isn't nearly as scary as the filmmaker's had hoped it would be, there are a couple of good jump scares here. They don't provide any lasting impact, but they at least keep the last half of the picture from falling into the boring trap that the first half fell victim to. Unfortunately, a few keen moments here and there and a bit of slick style don't make up for the pacing problems and, the confusing set up, and the corny concept. The Wig approaches its subject matter quite seriously and you have to give the filmmaker's credit for trying, but the end result just doesn't work well enough to make this worth your time.

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is quite good on this DVD. There's a little bit of print damage here and there in the form of the odd speck or two and just a hint of mpeg compression in a couple of scenes but aside from that this is a clean and appealing transfer of some very dark source material. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and the cool hues used throughout the film ensure that cold look and tone that the filmmaker's were going for comes through nicely on DVD.