Filmmaker Justin Simien hops in his DeLorean to travel back to 1989 for his new horror satire, Bad Hair. And with a brand-new trailer, we’re even more excited about this film.
If you were a fan of Simien’s Don’t @ Me podcast, then you know about his love affair with horror flicks and his obsession with Brian De Palma’s psychological thrillers. So don’t get Hulu’s Bad Hair confused with Chris Rock’s Good Hair documentary. In the 2009 doc, the observational comedian travels to beauty salons and talks to celebrities about their hair experiences. In Bad Hair, out in October, a haunted weave wreaks havoc on the owner.
The film centers Anna, played by Elle Lorraine (Insecure, Dear White People), who’s an ambitious assistant eager to climb the ranks at the music video show Culture, according to Indie Wire. But Anna’s boss (Vanessa Williams) is determined to block her blessings and offers suggestions about what Anna should do with her natural hair. And everyone knows that in the music video world, image is everything.
So young and tender-headed Anna gets a weave—installed by Laverne Cox’s Virgie—in hopes of succeeding in the industry. As Virgie cornrows her crown in preparation for the weave, she tells Anna, “Clients say this stuff is magic.”
But Anna’s new weave may be haunted and have a mind of its own. And her family, especially her dad (Blair Underwood) isn’t pleased with Anna’s new do. He tells her, “You cannot bear to see yourself the way nature would have you and you scoff at us and our superstitions. Well, our superstitions are in fact tributaries leading to truth about what you really are and who might have been.”
Back in July, Simien told ESSENCE that the fun film was really about “White supremacy” and the “systems that appear like choices, but aren’t really choices.” Simien, who grew up in a house full of women, was careful to note that Bad Hair isn’t an “interrogation of a Black woman’s right” to choose how she styles her hair. Rather, the director said it questions a society that says, “If you sort of show up the way you were made, the way you were born, you’re going to be excluded from these conversations.”
Bad Hair, which stars Lena Waithe, Kelly Rowland, Usher and James Van Der Beek, premieres on October 23 on Hulu.