Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bad Hair’ on Hulu, a Scary-Funny Satire in Which a Woman’s Weave Goes Wild

Hulu original movie Bad Hair is filmmaker Justin Simien‘s terrifyingly funny late-’80s-set satire about one woman’s wicked weave, and if the scary stuff doesn’t make you bust a move, the social commentary will. After making a name for himself with Dear White People — the movie and its spinoff TV series — Simien ventures into horror, further rendering the post-Get Out world richer with Black cinematic voices.

BAD HAIR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: When Anna Bludso (Elle Lorraine) was a kid, she recorded herself pretending to be a radio DJ; she also tried to de-kink her hair with chemical straightener, and has the scar to prove it. Now, it’s 1989, and she’s spent four years as a low-level assistant at a BET-ish music-video network dubbed Culture. But a corporate Caucasian (James Van Der Beek) decides the cable channel needs revamping, so he hires a vamp as the new head, former model Zora (Vanessa Williams). Is the goal to rope in a wider audience, or a whiter one? Yes! She sees some producer-host potential in Anna, but wrinkles her nose at her appearance, and sends her to a high-end hairdresser for sew-in extensions. Oh, and Culture gets rebranded as Cult. NEAT.

Anna takes money she should use to get her scumlord landbag off her back and visits Virgie (Laverne Cox) for a weave, triggering past hair-related traumas. “Don’t get it wet,” Virgie warns, but she says nothing about feeding it after midnight. Anna grits her teeth as the needle scrapes her scalp. You do what you gotta do when your aspirations are at stake. The next day, she’s hitting the Bayer bottle hard but turning heads at the office. She slices her finger shuffling papers, and the hair, I dunno, how do you say it, comes to life and kind of vampirizes the blood from the cut, but even if it’s a bit unsettling, that’s nothing to get too alarmed about, is it? NAH.

Meanwhile, Anna’s haunted by an old slave story about a “moss-haired girl”; she nurses a bit of heartbreak after high-top-faded show host Julius (Jay Pharoah) stops banging her and shifts to Zora; competitiveness rears its head among other Cult personalities (Lena Waithe, Yaani King Mondschein) as Anna vies for power; and a Janet Jacksonian superstar named Sandra (Kelly Rowland) factors in thanks to her irrepressible hit video on Cult. Then there’s a corpse to deal with, because that was inevitable, and wait, aren’t there other women around here who got blood- and soulsucking weaves from the same sinister hairdresser? Is that something to worry about? PROBABLY.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is a fem-centric Get Out with bits of oogy Cronenbergian body horror and the visual grain and kitsch of something Z-grade from the era like… C.H.U.D.? Yeah, sure, C.H.U.D.!

Performance Worth Watching: Although Williams is the designated scene thief, Lorraine gives Bad Hair an earnestness preventing it from flying off the rails, and the horrified facial expressions that keep it firmly on target for the genre.

Memorable Dialogue: “You’re not tender-headed, are you?” — Virgie sits Anna down for a scary sew-in

Sex and Skin: A nookie sequence in which the involved male probably shouldn’t get too worked up about the lady being on top with her hair hanging over his face.

Our Take: There will be ZERO hair puns in this review. No “the narrative twists like a tight braid” or “it’s full of dread” or “with a little script conditioner it might have fewer split ends.” None of that. I tweezed all that shit out of this review until it was a sleek, kempt eyebrow.

With the hacky crap out of the way, we’re free to discuss Simien’s ambition. On a surface level, Bad Hair is a sly spoof of late-’80s pop R&B music and style, a workplace comedy skewering racial and sexual politics and an amusing pastiche of the era’s prevalent horror-movie schlock. It’s a finely tuned melange of laughs and scares, each seamlessly transitioning to the other. This is a terrifically entertaining movie featuring a strong central performance from Lorraine and shot with the vision of a true filmmaker.

Thematically, it lacks the crystalline focus and provocative subtext of Jordan Peele’s Get Out or Us — few films do, to be fair — as Simien’s slave-folklore backstory is haphazardly worked into the plot, and supporting characters feel sketchy and ill-defined. But the central metaphor is tenacious, as Anna sells her soul for success in a world run by white people and staffed with Black folk. She compromises her identity, represented by her hair, which attacks, kills and quite literally sucks the color from its victims. The film doesn’t always hang together in terms of narrative execution, but the method is wild and memorable, and the message is loud and clear.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Bad Hair isn’t as laser-sharp as it could be. But it’s crazy and fun and has something to say — three things that make for rousing horror.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Bad Hair on Hulu