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Wig: Unrated (The)
R1 - America - Genius Products Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (23rd June 2008). |
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The Film
 Too many horror movies are misusing or abusing the classic shocker formula for horror movies. Getting a jump out of the audience isn’t just about having something jump at them first; the most memorable scary moments are built up by anticipation, the feeling of dread built through pacing and establishing tone. Won Shin-Yeon’s “The Wig” (2005) loses out on the tension that could be built and instead favors shock moments without any tension throughout and a sloppy plot twist. The story follows Su-hyeon (Chae Min-seo), a surviving cancer patient who has been undergoing chemotherapy and is finally able to leave the hospital. Her sister Ji-hyeon (Yu Seon), who lost her voice in a car accident many years ago, gives Su-hyeon a wig to make her feel better about herself in public. Unbeknownst to either sister is the wig’s murderous intent and creation history. Though the wig makes Su-hyeon feel better at first, it eventually overtakes her life and starts shaping her in the image of the person who the hair originally belonged to in order to fill the hair’s original owner’s desires. I understand that there needs to be mystery behind the owner of the wig and the wig’s creation that builds, especially if Shin-Yeon is trying to set up a big twist at the end of the movie, but the clues just aren’t around until 10 minutes before the twist occurs. For the most part there’s a lot of convoluted references and bizarre lines of dialogue, but these don’t add tension or make me any more interested in the mystery of where the wig came from and why it’s evil. Once we do find out whose hair it was, I still don’t understand what made it so evil or imbued the wig with such mystical powers. It’s a situation where the writer and the director need to either make it more mysterious to make it more supernatural, or add some character depth to the wig’s owner rather than have them play a token-vengeance role. From a gore perspective, there wasn’t much to be impressed about. The DVD cover of “The Wig” shows an image that’s on par, if not a little less than, the goriest scene in the movie which is entirely disappointing. It also sports an “unrated” label written in blood on the cover too, which is supposed to indicate something too-gory or too-extreme, but for “The Wig” it’s more of an indication that they just didn’t bother to send it through the MPAA. There is a good scene where Su-hyeon digs at her balding scalp, but overall nothing really there for gorehounds. "The Wig" itself has some ridiculous moments, in one of the beginning scenes a man is driving down the road and suddenly the wig flies out of nowhere to hit his windshield. Apparently the wig can fly. There’s supposed to be some supernatural elements to the wig, but that doesn’t mean it has to move. It could have been a better, more psychological movie if there was nothing apparently bad about the wig, but instead it flies around into cars and appears in odd places. The cg they use on the wig when it’s moving on its own looks okay, but I could have done without it. Overall the movie could use some major corrections in terms of pacing and tone. The music doesn’t do anything to create tension or set the mood for the movie; it’s almost an afterthought and doesn’t make an impact. The story gets weighed down in the first half of the movie, then realizing that there’s only a half hour left in the movie, all the plotlines come together and make some new points before coming to the twist that really wants to be like “Psycho” (1960) but just never gets it done. Even with some music changes and some plot changes, the directing and acting is very plain, never rising above mediocre and constantly dipping far below the border of entertaining.
Video
“The Wig” is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen and the transfer looks good, there’s some grain in a couple of scenes, but it’s not distracting. The visuals in the movie aren’t spectacular, much of the movie is told in some muted grays and darker colors are supposed to enhance the mood of the movie, but it leaves many scenes feeling washed out and scenes with blood don’t let the blood stand out against the grey setting so it’s not very stylistic either.
Audio
Presented in Korean Dolby Digital 5.1 with optional English subtitles, the audio comes out fairly clear and well balanced. I already mentioned that there’s not a lot to be said about the music, but the sound effects are a little off-putting. They fluctuate between the proper dissonance that a horror film should be trying to create to becoming annoying to becoming ignorable.
Extras
Genius Products releases “The Wig” comes with a Making-of documentary and two featurettes. Below is a closer look. First, the “The Making of ‘The Wig’” documentary runs for 19 minutes and 34 seconds (although listed as a documentary, it's more like a featurette) and goes behind the scenes on the movie talking mostly with the director about the meaning of the movie. He does a lot of talking about the characters, a bit about the actors, there’s a good amount of behind the scenes footage, but none of it makes the movie more intriguing or any better. Next is the “Special Effects” featurette which runs for 10 minutes and 25 seconds. The director is again the focus, with a good amount of behind the scenes footage on putting together the makeup and practical effects used on the set. They do some on-set talking with the makeup directors, but I would have liked an actual interview into their process and some talk with more of the special effects people. Finally is the “Behind the Scenes” featurette which runs for 9 minutes and 1 second. This featurette features talking with the actors, shows when Chae Min-Seo got her head shaved to prepare for looking like she had gone through chemotherapy, but overall it feels like a lot of footage they just didn’t use in the making-of documentary.
Overall
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