The Wig

Plot

A young woman named Soo-hyeon (Chae Min-seo) is struggling against cancer and her older sister Ji-hyeon (Yoo Sun) decides that she should take her home so that she really can enjoy what little time she has left rather than to spend it in a hospital. Ji-hyeon is a mute, during a car accident which impaled her throat. She now cannot speak again and can only make rasping noises at the most; despite this, she is a very strong person and very caring for her little sister. She buys a long-haired wig with bangs for her so that she can go out without having to feel ashamed of herself; what she doesn't know is that the wig is cursed. Soo-hyeon is so happy with the wig on, she begins to look and act a lot healthier and far more attractive. She leaves the house often, to take photos of herself at various locations.

Soon, however, she begins to flirt and try and steal Ji-hyeon's boyfriend. He breaks up with Ji-hyeon but is still not too interested in Soo-hyeon. One day, one of Ji-hyeon's friends finds out that her husband is cheating on her and is at a loss for a solution to her problem. Soo-hyeon lends her wig saying that she will feel that she looks prettier and better. She agrees and takes the wig home. The next day she is found dead with her husband, covered in hair. Soo-hyeon's wig returns to her, mysteriously. She then goes out to a club with Ji-hyeon's ex-boyfriend. Ji-hyeon follows her and attempts to speak to her in the toilets, but Soo-hyeon cruelly ignores her and she leaves. Soo-hyeon tries to put her makeup on but is then suddenly plagued with frightening images of her sister's friend's demise. Ji-hyeon takes her home. The next day, Soo-hyeon tries to have sex with Ji-hyeon's ex, but Ji-hyeon picks her up and the two drive home in silence, until Soo-hyeon begins to goad her. Ji-hyeon angrily stomps on the brakes, but soon begins to drive on.

At home the two don't speak until Soo-hyeon washes the wig, when Ji-hyeon sees a ghost in the wig. Soo-hyeon begins to brush her "hair" later on, but Ji-hyeon grabs the wig from her head and locks Soo-hyeon in her room. As Soo-hyeon pounds on the door screaming, her sister cuts the wig to shreds. The cancer then comes back to Soo-hyeon and she has to go back to hospital, unhappy and heartbroken, refusing to see her sister. Things turn from bad to worse as Soo-hyeon escapes from the hospital after not taking her medication. We see a twisted, disturbing scene of Soo-hyeon pulling pills from her bloody scalp.

We are then shown that the wig belonged to a man who was in a romantic relationship with Ji-hyeon's ex-boyfriend. Being gay, he was eventually shunned by Ji-hyeon's ex and beaten by a group of teens, cutting his long hair out. He then committed suicide by jumping off a building. The ghost of the man (now fully possessing Soo-hyeon) is using her as a host and tries to go back with Ji-hyeon's ex. As they kiss, Soo-hyeon's hair grows very long at an impossibly fast rate. Ji-hyeon appears and fights the ghost in her sister's body and sets fire to the long hair, freeing her sister and destroying the ghost. Unfortunately, Ji-hyeon hallucinates that the ghost is there instead of her sister and beats her to death with her camera. As Soo-hyeon dies, her sister cries at what she had done. The film ends, showing the two girls as children in a photograph, before Soo-hyeon's cancer and Ji-hyeon's speech loss.

Cast

Reception

Critical reception for The Wig has been mixed. DVD Talk and Shock Till You Drop were both relatively ambivalent in their reviews, as both felt that the movie wasn't the best that Asian horror had to offer but still had some viewing value to it that people would enjoy. Bloody Disgusting echoed these sentiments, as they felt that the movie "requires a lot of commitment on the part of the viewer" but that the payoff was "worth it, because as strange as it is, you might not have seen anything quite like it before."