Bad Hair begins with a myth. Sitting for dinner at her aunt and uncle’s home, Anna (Lorraine) hesitantly tries to tell her family that she might be looking at a promotion, but they shrug it away, more excited to discuss an old book of Black mythos than her tentative accomplishments. She scoffs, half annoyed that her family can’t find pride in her television work, and asks why a room full of people with doctorates are interested in a bunch of “superstitions and fairy tales.” But her uncle (Underwood) bites back. “How do you subjugate a group of people?” he asks. “You subjugate a group of people by telling them their science is superstition, their faith is heresy, and their wisdom is make believe.”
The urban legend that Anna eventually finds herself unnaturally drawn to in Bad Hair is the tale of the Moss-haired Girl, about a slave woman who fashions herself a wig from the dark moss that grows on a tree on the grounds that one day comes to life and drinks the blood from the people around her. Urban legends are the core of many horror movies but were a particular trend from the Nineties, which is likely something writer and director Justin Simien had in mind when he set his horror debut in 1989.
And in 1989, Anna finds herself in the midst of a huge corporate rebranding at her job at a BET-style television network. The film opens with a white male network executive telling a room full of Black women that their long-admired boss will be stepping down and replaced by former supermodel Zora (Williams). Culture is dated, and the figurehead of this change is pop artist Sandra (Rowland, aptly cast). Her new music video showcases her luscious straight hair (you can barely see her face) which, as Anna learns, is a weave.
Forced to fit in so she can climb up the ladder of her dream job, Anna gets a weave from the same salon Sandra and Zora got theirs, which is right when the film turns its attention to the Moss-haired Girl myth and creeps its way into electric campy horror. Utilizing a combination of stop motion and CGI effects, Simien directs his bloodthirsty hair in homage to Sion Sono’s EXTE: Hair Extensions, where the hair itself sticks to open wounds, bunching, crawling, and smothering its victims, feeding on the living so Anna can reluctantly keep up with society’s Eurocentric beauty standards.
Simien can’t seem to keep focus, though, and the folklore of the Moss-haired Girl never has a satisfying deeper connection to Anna’s circumstances. It instead feels as paper thin as most of the characters that surround her, from her co-workers to her love interest.
Many women have such a deep connection to their hair, and perhaps this is just something that Simien couldn’t relate and tap into. Appreciation, homage, and impeccable knowledge of horror are only a handful of the building blocks you need to create a powerful, twisted tale. Nevertheless, Simien’s efforts are valiant and, above all else, wholly original, so when he decides to ramp Bad Hair into overdrive, it’s easy to forget about his unintentionally hollow metaphor.
This article appears in The Halloween Issue.