Movies
[Sundance Review] ‘Bad Hair’ Unleashes Retro Horror Satire in Need of a Trim
Especially for women, hair has always been a status symbol. Writer/Director Justin Simien’s follow up feature to Dear White People plays up this notion in a big way, with a retro dramedy that centers around a seriously killer weave. Psychological thrills and provocative satire collide in a retro-horror comedy that wears its horror influences on its sleeves while exploring new, intriguing terrain. It just might be a little too ambitious.
Set in 1989 Los Angeles, Bad Hair follows Anna Bludso (Elle Lorraine), a meek but ambitious career woman hoping to be the next on-air music host at Culture, the TV network she’s slaved away at for years. Culture is under new management, though, aiming to revamp the network. That means jobs are on the line. To add to the pressure, Anna’s landlord criminally raised her rent, and her long term lover left her for another woman. To prove she has what it takes to not only remain on with Culture and climb the ranks, she swallows her fears and gets a weave to impress new boss Zora (Vanessa Williams), a former model with sleek hair. What Anna soon learns is that her new hair has a mind of its own.
With incredible production design and costuming, Simien immerses the viewer fully into this retro world rounded out by an ensemble that brings the laughs. The heartbeat of the film belongs to Lorraine, who deftly handles her character’s arc with poignancy and ferocity, in her feature debut no less. Anna’s heartbreaks and struggles fade away thanks to the newfound confidence of her new ‘do, which in turn brings out the more cutthroat side of her. To her horror, that means literally.
Simien introduces unique lore and mythology behind this killer weave story, one that never quite answers all of the questions it raises or explores it as fully as it should. Yet it’s thrilling to see nonetheless. There’s an entire lore book introduced in the movie, by Anna’s Uncle (Blair Underwood), that begs for further exploration. One of the major themes of the movie centers around how unreliable recorded history can be, mainly when it’s left to conquerors, and how that can set us up for failure in our present.
That social thriller aspect in some ways becomes jarring to the other flavors of horror Simien folds into the mix. There are moments of grotesque body horror, a ton of straightforward horror-comedy, and an endless amount of camp. Especially in the final act; the over the top campy finale is polar opposite to the heartfelt dramedy of the first half.
All of it makes for a unique and entertaining watch, save for two significant flaws. The most glaring is the awful CG effects to animate the killer weave. Seeing tendrils of hair seek out the blood of a wound or burger juices becomes extra silly thanks to the CG. The second biggest flaw is the two-hour runtime. Bad Hair is in serious need of a trim. Anna’s story is worth telling, but there are so many repetitive sequences that pad out the runtime to excess.
Overall, Bad Hair makes for a mostly fun time, but one that needs a little refinement. Worthy themes, a stellar cast, fantastic production design, and intriguing lore are the pluses, but as a whole, it seems Simien wasn’t quite sure how to make all of his ideas fit cohesively. He just threw it all at the wall to see what stuck.
In other words, this one’s an off the rails satire that’s guaranteed to be divisive.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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