Won Shin-yun

(In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) One of the usual problems with horror cinema is that it has to click on at least two levels to succeed: The scares should be good, and the reason behind the scare should work as well. All too often, filmmakers will focus on spooky set-pieces while forgetting that it should all amount to something—a compelling theme, a sensible plot, and developed characters. Otherwise, why bother? Director Won Shin-yun’s The Wig is only a half-success in that while it gets some spooky scares right, the film has issues tying them into something more. Beginning with a mute woman taking her younger cancer-stricken sister home so that she doesn’t die in a hospital, the scares get going when a wig (purchased so that the bald sister doesn’t feel too out-of-place) starts showing signs of malevolence. As flashbacks explain how we got there (most notably in showing the car accident that made the protagonist mute), the developing story steadily gets wilder and less credible. By the time the origins of the wig are clarified, the amount of preposterous material teetering on a foundation made of coincidences is too much—the film implodes on too many contrivances. The frequency of spooky sequences also goes down during that third act: wrongly convinced of its importance, the film slows down and gives audiences ample time to be skeptical of where the story goes, with unlikely connections between the handful of characters. While moments of The Wig work well, there are simply too many issues with plotting, pacing and character for the entire film to distinguish itself.