Watch Bad Hair

In the movie Bad Hair, which premiered in 2020, we meet Anna Bludso, a young woman working as an assistant at a music television station in Los Angeles in the late 1980s. She dreams of becoming a VJ, but knows she has little chance of achieving that goal without changing her appearance. See, Anna has naturally kinky hair that she keeps straightened, but her boss, Zora, tells her she needs to have a "brand new look" if she wants promote her career.

One day, Anna is approached by Virgie, a mysterious hairstylist played by Laverne Cox. Virgie encourages Anna to get a weave - specifically, one from the "Weave a Cure" salon. Anna reluctantly agrees and once the weave is installed, she begins to experience weird things, hallucinations, and violent mood swings. She also notices that the hair has a mind of its own, and it's hungry for blood.

At the same time, Anna's career is finally taking off. She gets promoted to a VJ position, but the pressure to be perfect is intense. Her boss Zora (played by Vanessa Williams) is a demanding and exacting personality who demands nothing less than perfection from Anna. Meanwhile, Anna's friends are being killed by her hair, so she must find a way to stop the evil that is taking over her life.

The plot of Bad Hair echoes classic horror movies like Little Shop of Horrors and The Witches, which also feature plants or animals that take on a life of their own and become villains. But in Bad Hair, it's the hair itself that is the killer, and that makes the horror feel personal and intimate - after all, many Black women have stories of hair-related trauma, whether it's getting teased for their natural hair texture, being forced to straighten their hair to fit Eurocentric beauty standards or getting nasty comments from family members about their hair choices.

The film touches upon the pressure Black women often face to conform to beauty standards that are diametrically opposed to our natural appearance. It highlights how capitalism's emphasis on assimilation and (white) beauty standards, forces us to choose between our culture and a paycheck. Throughout the movie, we see characters' commentary on how Black women's natural beauty is linked to their identity, with some advocating embracing natural hair as a form of protest against systemic oppression.

The cast, including unknown lead actress Elle Lorraine, delivers strong performances across the board. Anna, in particular, is a perfect mix of vulnerability, ambition and pride, while Vanessa Williams as Zora, is biting and sardonic. Bad Hair is also visually stunning, with director Justin Simien (who also created Netflix's Dear White People) evoking a classic 80s vibe with saturated colors, bold outfits, neon lights and animatronic hair.

Bad Hair is not only a horror movie, it is a social comment on beauty standards of people with different races. Therefore, it’s an important movie for every girl out there to watch. It's one of those films that works both as a straight-up horror flick - with plenty of jump scares, gore and suspense - and as a critical analysis of the past and the present racial and beauty realities we face. It's a powerful film that proves that sometimes the scariest things come not from supernatural forces but from the cultural pressure to be perfect.

Bad Hair is a 2020 horror movie with a runtime of 1 hour and 43 minutes. It has received moderate reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 5.6 and a MetaScore of 60.