Following a premiere at this year’s Sundance, Justin Simien’s long-awaited follow-up to Dear White People is arriving this October on Hulu. Bad Hair is a horror satire that centers on a young woman named Anna who gets a weave in order to find success in the world of television. She soon realizes that her weave might have taken on a life of its own. The film boasts a huge cast which includes Vanessa Williams, Lena Waithe, Blair Underwood, Laverne Cox, Jay Pharaoh, Robin Thede, James Van Der Beek, Usher, Kelly Rowland, in addition to Elle Lorraine (Insecure) as Anna.
“In Bad Hair I wanted to use the language of psychological thrillers and classics in the horror genre to interrogate how systems of white supremacy are often disguised as opportunities for Black people,” the director said. “I also wanted to showcase Black women in a genre that typically excludes them as well as celebrate the last black renaissance of the late 80s and 90s.”
The teaser trailer for the film shows Anna getting her weave done by a hairstylist as played by Cox, well as hinting at some of the horror that awaits Anna. In between features, Simien has kept himself busy with the TV adaptation of Dear White People, which is currently entering its fourth and final season on Netflix.
Matt Cipolla said in our review, “Bad Hair has all of the starting points for success: a game cast, a campy premise, an idea that has more than a little social commentary behind it. It’s clearly a passion project for Simien too—no filmmaker would put this much world-building into a project that they didn’t have the utmost faith in. And it works for a while. From the music to the pop cultural allusions, the script is a prime example of having a lot of places to go. Unfortunately, this is also a case of a movie only going so far, reaching a point where its parallels become too literal to stick and its plot turns just doesn’t know when to quit.”
See the teaser below.
Bad Hair arrives on October 23 on Hulu.