"Bad Hair" bold, buck-wild fun with something on its mind

Bad Hair (2020)

Writer-director Julien Simien’s high-concept horror satire “Bad Hair” is about *checks notes* a possessed killer weave, and what more do you need to know? As he made it clear with his whip-smart, confrontational 2014 feature debut “Dear White People,” Simien is hardly coy about what is on his mind, even when there’s social commentary thinly veiled behind long extensions of strangling, blood-slurping hair. Simien’s sophomore effort is fiendish and ridiculously camp-forward, while conspicuously having something to say about whitewashing a BET-style channel and the pressures of Black women with satirical purpose and specificity. “Bad Hair” is big, bold, buck-wild fun.

Ever since a chemical burn from a hair neutralizer as a young girl, soft-spoken Anna Bludso (Elle Lorraine) has been “tender-headed,” choosing to keep her hair natural. In 1989, Los Angeles, she has been an executive assistant four years and counting for music-oriented TV network “Culture” that prides itself on being “by the people, for the people.” When the parent company’s white male executive (James Van Der Beek) comes in to clean house, he puts lighter-skinned ex-supermodel-diva Zora (Vanessa Williams) in charge to retool the channel with a posh, all-audiences facelift and rebrand it as “Cult.” Zora wants all of her girls to be uniform, particularly in the hair department, so she slides Anna a card to check out world-class hair salon Virgie’s for a hefty cost — and not just the actual numerical price. When Anna makes a desperate plea for an appointment, despite the year-long wait time, the stylist (Laverne Cox) gives her a sewn-in weave. It’s a painful process, but hopefully Anna can reap the rewards of being noticed and no longer being threatened to be evicted from her apartment by her slumlord. Anna’s confidence level goes on the rise but so does the trail of bodies, as her out-for-blood weave has a mind of its own and can fix everything to make Anna flourish as the on-air face of the whitewashed channel.

Like anything, you can either go with the premise of “Bad Hair” or not. It’s a bonkers twist on a standard Killer Object slasher movie coupled with a morality plot: do you stick to your guns or sell your soul and follow social trends to move up the ladder? With the thematic bones of “The Stepford Wives” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” in terms of conformity and the gruesomely comic tone of “Tales from the Hood,” the film zeroes in on Black culture and image-obsessed norms in the workplace. It’s set in the late-‘80s but probably just as relevant today, while being rooted in Black cultural superstitions and folklore. Julien Simien’s script can be a little uneven when tracking Anna’s rather hasty arc, but rather than getting too deep into the weeds with the weave mythology, it finds a balance between exposition and suggestion. Out of convenience sake but not out of the realm of possibility, Anna happens to have a professor for a father (played by Blair Underwood), who is well-read in slave lore, particularly that of the “Moss-Haired Girl,” so his books come in handy. 

Compensating for the film’s budgetary constraints is the sheer abandon Julien Simien’s committed cast brings to the material. Playing Anna in earnest, newcomer Elle Lorraine is a strong grounding force as everything around her becomes loopy. Following a classic arc, Anna is sweet but put-upon and unassertive before her new look changes her personality, but Lorraine always remains empathetic. In an ensemble that’s been flawlessly cast to even the most minor part, Lena Waithe is just one who makes the most as a supporting player, TV emcee Brook-Lynne, with her comic timing when the hair-horror hits the fan. Vanessa Williams and Laverne Cox are both master strokes in casting, and both Usher and a glowing-eyed Kelly Rowland pop up in a couple of scenes as R&B giants. Rowland, in particular, channels Janet Jackson to perfection in a mock music video. 

While horror is often stigmatized and misunderstood as being nothing more than blood and guts, “Bad Hair” proves the genre can, once again, be a carrier for loaded, provocative conversations and still be entertaining. How do you make a murderous weave scary, though? Well, you don’t. Horrific things do happen, as the weave does do some damage (and the actual installation of the hairpiece into Anna's real hair is brutal with squirm-inducing sound design), but this isn’t a movie to have nightmares over. It’s just hair, right? Falling firmly into the subgenre of Killer Objects movies—“Rubber” and “In Fabric” are a few others, being about a killer tire and a killer dress, respectively—“Bad Hair” cannot and should not be taken seriously, but its themes are still as potent as a scalp scrub. 

Grade: B

NEON is releasing “Bad Hair” (102 min.) on Hulu on October 23, 2020.