phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2021

Bad Hair



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 42min
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre Tags: Comedy, Horror, Music
Plot Summary: In 1989 an ambitious young woman gets a weave in order to succeed in the image-obsessed world of music television. However, her flourishing career may come at a great cost when she realizes that her new hair may have a mind of its own.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: This is a LOT going on this movie, and it all gets short shrift. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it, even if in only bits and pieces. It's at its best when it's Little Shop Of Horrors, but with a weave instead of a plant. Also, the cast is bonkers stacked


Outside Reviews:

Odie Henderson
2.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Where Bad Hair is not so successful, however, is in reckoning with the hornet's nest it kicks regarding its subject matter. At almost two hours, Simien has time to interrogate the natural vs. processed hair argument instead of only hinting at it occasionally. It took Spike Lee just over six minutes to create such a dialogue in the "Straight and Nappy" number in School Daze. That film came out in 1988, one year before Bad Hair takes place. The lack of focus on this controversial issue is more a product of the screenplay biting off more than it can chew. We also have to deal with workplace sexism, racial micro- and macroaggressions, gentrification, the media's need to catering to a White audience - and that's just on the satire side. On the horror side, we've got witches, folktales, slavery and UltraPerms gone bad. The horror side works out better, even if it doesn't live up to its promise of a weave-based Verzuz battle featuring Vanessa Williams.


Shannon Miller
Horror comedy Bad Hair suffers from tousled commentary but is good for a few laughs

With a horror premise rooted in a very specific cultural experience, early comparisons to Jordan Peele's work were inevitable. (Hulu's trailer for the film, backed by a haunting rendition of Bell Biv DeVoe's "Poison," does exude strong Us vibes, which didn't help). However, there's a stronger tie to Chris Rock's 2009 documentary, Good Hair, which essentially explored one man's curiosity and eventual judgment regarding Black women and how they choose to style their hair. Like that film, this one is guided by the perspective of a person not directly affected by the chosen subject. While there is absolutely something to be said about the ways Eurocentric beauty standards have been weaponized against Black women for centuries, Bad Hair conveniently ignores the complex relationship that Black women have with their hair, including their autonomy in the matter. The idea that some women may just want to try a new look or explore the versatility of their own hair without some attached trauma never seems to occur to the film. Its conversation is rigid, pitting natural hair against weave or other methods of maintenance.