Source: Hulu / hulu
The movie theatres haven’t seen a packed house in ages, but it doesn’t mean there’s a low supply in new releases for our viewing pleasures. On the way is a new horror flick about Black women, natural hair, and a possessed hair weave install that’s gone rogue.
Set in 1989, Bad Hair follows a natural-haired executive assistant with ambitions making it on air as a music-video TV show host. Her dreadlocked boss suggests getting a hair weave to break into the business. Eager to succeed, she heads to a beautician for an install but later discovers the weave is horrifically possessed.
This Black production of a very Black story is written and directed by Justin Simien, director of Netflix’s Dear White People. The cast lineup is just as exciting as the film, starring Kelly Rowland, Lena Waithe, Laverne Cox, Vanessa Williams, Blair Underwood, James Van Der Beek, and Usher Raymond IV, to name a few.
Simien explained to Variety that the script examines the systems pressuring Black women to attain European beauty standards in order to achieve success, not the process of getting the weave installation itself:
“I didn’t really want to moralize getting a weave or not,” he explained. He instead wanted to question “the system that marginalizes and oppresses Black women.” Simien added that he was inspired to make the film a horror satire after watching a subgenre of films considered “hair horror.” “I wanted to make us something about the system that sort of gives people just one or two choices in order to move ahead. I wanted to take that system to task and I just, I thought it’d be a really fun way to do that.”
Bad Hair is set to arrive October 23 exclusively on Hulu.
