"Bad Hair," Justin Simien’s 2020 foray into horror-tinged satire, arrives like a bad perm: initially intriguing with its glossy curls of promise, but ultimately weighed down by the frizz of its own overextensions. For a film billed as a full-throated skewering of identity politics and the cutthroat glamour of the music industry, it’s shockingly devoid of nuance, opting instead for sledgehammer swings at themes that feel as fresh as a 1990s flip phone. The movie’s core mantra—"be yourself," "don’t betray your identity"—isn’t just reiterated; it’s hammered home with the subtlety of a infomercial hawking self-help tapes, looping ad nauseam until it grates like an endless hair commercial jingle. By the third or fourth time our protagonist, Anna (Elle Lorraine), stares into a mirror and whispers some variation on "I am enough," you’re not nodding in affirmation; you’re rolling your eyes, wondering if Simien mistook his audience for a room full of impressionable middle-schoolers. It’s the kind of on-the-nose messaging that turns potential profundity into preachiness, leaving you irritated rather than illuminated. And yet, for all its blunt-force trauma, "Bad Hair" isn’t a total washout. It boasts moments of razor-sharp wit, like the venomous dissection of late-1980s/early-1990s music television, where VJs preen like peacocks on steroids and executives scheme like Bond villains in shoulder pads. Or the gleefully offensive parodies of contemporary pop icons, embodied by Kelly Rowland and Usher in roles that teeter on the edge of caricature so bold it’s borderline brilliant. For viewers utterly detached from the labyrinth of American racial dynamics, the film might land as anything but complimentary—a parade of Black characters clawing for success by yearning to "pass" as white, their relaxer-treated tresses a metaphor for cultural erasure that’s as uncomfortable as it is unflinching. But as yet another entry in the blaxploitation revival canon—albeit one with loftier pretensions than your average grindhouse grind—"Bad Hair" is far from the genre’s nadir. It’s a messy, mullet-chopped experiment that, in its wilder swings, reminds us why Simien earned his stripes as a provocateur, even if this time, the scissors slipped. To unpack this tangled mane, let’s rewind to Simien’s trajectory, because context is everything in a film that’s essentially a love letter (or hate mail) to Black cultural assimilation. Born in 1983 in Houston, Texas, Justin Simien burst onto the scene with "Dear White People" (2014), a Sundance sensation that weaponized campus satire to eviscerate liberal hypocrisy and microaggressions with the precision of a campus protest sign. That debut—low-budget, high-concept, and laced with the kind of dialogue that could double as Twitter clapbacks—netted him an Independent Spirit Award nomination and a Netflix series greenlight, transforming him into the go-to voice for millennial dissections of race in America. From there, he leveled up with "What Men Want" (2019), a Taraji P. Henson-led gender-flip of the old-school sports-agent comedy, proving he could handle studio gloss without losing his edge. But "Bad Hair," his sophomore swing under Hulu’s banner, feels like a deliberate detour into genre territory—a horror-comedy hybrid that grafts body-horror tentacles onto social allegory, evoking the spirit of Jordan Peele’s "Get Out" (2017) while nodding to the schlocky splendor of '70s blaxploitation flicks like "Black Shampoo" or "Sugar Hill." Simien wrote, directed, and produced it during the height of the Black Lives Matter resurgence, a moment when Hollywood was scrambling to diversify its dread. The result? A film that’s equal parts homage and hubris, a weave of influences so intricate it occasionally unravels under its own weight. At its heart, "Bad Hair" is a tale of follicular fury set against the neon-drenched backdrop of KHAY-TV, a fictional cable network that’s basically BET’s evil twin—think glossy video vixens, lip-sync battles, and boardroom battles where diversity is just another line item on the expense report. Our heroine, Anna, is a ambitious production assistant with a killer smile and a secret: her natural hair, a crown of tight coils that screams unapologetic Blackness in a world that prizes Eurocentric sleekness. Enter the titular bad hair day: a Korean-American stylist named Uncle Philly (a scene-stealing Zola Mashariki) offers her a revolutionary weave that promises to transform her look overnight. What follows is a descent into scalp-scorching madness, as the hairpiece—revealed to be a sentient, bloodthirsty entity—begins exerting its will, snipping rivals and staging coups with the ferocity of a possessed ponytail. Simien structures the narrative as a faux-found-footage anthology, interspersing Anna’s unraveling with mockumentary clips of KHAY’s rise: grainy promos of acid-washed aerobics, corny skits parodying "In Living Color," and executive monologues that drip with the casual racism of Reagan-era boardrooms. It’s a clever frame, allowing Simien to layer in historical Easter eggs—like nods to the Crown Heights riots or the crack epidemic—without bogging down the pace. But here’s where the subtlety deficit kicks in: every plot beat doubles as a TED Talk on self-acceptance. Anna’s boss, the icy white exec Gogo (Vanessa Hudgens, channeling a Botoxed Cruella De Vil), embodies institutional gatekeeping, her compliments laced with backhanded barbs about "professional" appearances. When Anna succumbs to the weave, it’s framed not just as a career move but a Faustian bargain for her soul, complete with voiceover narrations that spell out the metaphor in crayon: "Hair is identity; to change it is to change yourself." By the midpoint, you’re begging for subtext—any whisper of ambiguity—to leaven the loaf. Simien, bless his earnest heart, delivers lectures instead, turning what could have been a sly critique into a Sunday school sermon. It’s frustrating because the setup screams potential: in an era of "Cuties" controversies and weave wars on social media, a nuanced take on beauty standards could have been revolutionary. Instead, it’s rote, recycling the "love your curls" trope with the originality of a Pinterest board. That said, when "Bad Hair" leans into its satirical snarls, it bites with bared teeth. The film’s sharpest barbs are reserved for the music television machine, that late-'80s/early-'90s behemoth where MTV’s moonwalk gave way to Yo! MTV Raps, and Black artists were tokenized like exotic pets. Simien, a self-professed child of the era (he grew up idolizing Janet Jackson’s "Rhythm Nation" videos), recreates the vibe with meticulous malice: fluorescent-lit studios where dancers in Day-Glo spandex gyrate to synth-pop slop, VJs with perms that defy gravity spouting platitudes about "urban appeal." One standout sequence—a disastrous live taping of a "diversity" special—descends into chaos as Anna’s hair rebels mid-broadcast, literally yanking a co-host offstage in a spray of fake blood and sequins. It’s a riotous evisceration of the era’s performative progressivism: executives pat themselves on the back for hiring one Black face per hour block, while the real power stays lily-white. Simien doesn’t stop at nostalgia; he extrapolates forward, drawing parallels to today’s streaming wars where algorithms dictate "relatability" and TikTok trends commodify culture. The KHAY boardroom scenes, scripted with the venom of Aaron Sorkin on a bender, crackle with insider lingo—"crossover demo," "edgy but palatable"—that exposes the hypocrisy without a hint of mercy. It’s here that the film transcends its preachiness, becoming a time capsule of calculated cool: the way a producer (Billie Lourd, all wide-eyed WASP entitlement) greenlights a rap act only after bleaching their sound, or how the network’s tokenism crumbles under ratings pressure, forcing Anna into the weave as a desperate rebrand. These moments pulse with the authenticity of lived experience—Simien interviewed real VJs and stylists for research, infusing the satire with anecdotes that sting like split ends. No discussion of "Bad Hair"'s highs would be complete without saluting its parade of pop-star parodies, which veer so close to the cliff of offensiveness that they achieve liftoff into legend. Kelly Rowland, stepping out of Destiny’s Child’s shadow with predatory poise, plays Sista Sherri, a R& B diva whose purr is pure poison—think a love child of Mary J. Blige and a Bond girl gone rogue. Her entrance, slinking onto a soundstage in a catsuit that hugs like a second skin, sets the tone: Sherri’s not just a singer; she’s a siren, her hits laced with double entendres about betrayal and bounce-back that mirror Anna’s arc. Rowland commits with campy gusto, her vocal runs devolving into hair-whipping hysteria as her own weave wars with Anna’s, culminating in a catfight that’s equal parts "Dynasty" and "Dreamgirls" on acid. It’s on the knife-edge of insult—reducing a Black icon to a bouffant-battling banshee—but Rowland owns it, infusing Sherri with a tragicomic depth that elevates the gag to gut-punch. Usher fares even better as the slick crooner Johnny Santrino, a Michael Jackson-lite with a Jesus complex and a perm that screams "Thriller" era excess. Usher’s physicality is the star here: his moonwalk morphs into a mane-maneuver as his locks lash out like Medusa’s snakes, turning a soulful ballad into a blood-soaked spectacle. Simien directs these cameos with the flair of a music video auteur—quick cuts, strobe lights, bass drops that sync with arterial sprays—transforming parody into performance art. It’s borderline blasphemous: Santrino’s "healing hands" routine, where he lays on hands while his hair harvests scalps, mocks the messianic aura around pop saviors, from MJ’s glove to Beyoncé's halo. For fans in the know, it’s deliciously disrespectful; for outsiders, it’s a crash course in cultural shorthand that might land like a cultural landmine. Either way, these sequences are the film’s adrenaline shots, proving Simien’s gift for weaponizing celebrity against itself. Yet, for all its barbed brilliance, "Bad Hair" stumbles hardest when grappling with its racial core—a thorny thicket of themes that demand delicacy but get the back-alley barber treatment. At its essence, the film is a horror fable about "passing," that loaded American ritual where Black folks straightened hair, lightened skin, or anglicized names to infiltrate white spaces. Simien doesn’t shy from the ugliness: Anna’s decision to get the weave isn’t villainized outright but framed as a survival tactic in a industry that equates nappiness with unmarketability. Her colleagues—dark-skinned women with afros relegated to "urban" segments—whisper warnings about "the process," a euphemism for chemical straightening that’s as loaded as it is literal. When the hair turns homicidal, it’s a visceral metaphor for the self-erasure that success demands: follicles rebelling against the relaxer, reclaiming agency through violence. It’s potent stuff, echoing the real histories of Madam C.J. Walker’s empire or the "good hair" debates in Chris Rock’s 2009 documentary. But Simien’s execution lacks finesse; the film’s Black characters aren’t a monolith of resistance but a spectrum of sellouts, from the ambitious climber (Anna) to the outright aspirational whites (a producer who co-opts cornrows for clout). For American viewers steeped in the discourse—from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essays to "Insecure"'s workplace woes—this registers as a mirror, uncomfortable but necessary. But for international audiences, or those "totally out of context" with U.S. racial intricacies, it can curdle into caricature: dark-skinned strivers bleaching their souls for a spotlight, their pain played for perms-and-gore yuks. One scene, where a character laments "I just want to be pretty like them," while gazing at a poster of a blue-eyed blonde, isn’t just obvious—it’s borderline exploitative, risking the reinforcement of stereotypes rather than their subversion. Simien, to his credit, complicates this with Uncle Philly’s backstory—a Korean immigrant navigating his own outsider status—but it’s too little, too late. The satire flirts with colorism without fully interrogating it, leaving a bitter aftertaste amid the blood spray. In a post-"Euphoria" landscape where shows like "Rap Sh! t" dissect these dynamics with surgical wit, "Bad Hair" feels like a throwback: bold in intent, blunt in delivery. As a blaxploitation successor—complete with funky basslines, over-the-top kills, and a heroine who wields her 'fro like a flamethrower—"Bad Hair" holds its own in a lineage that’s seen resurgences from "Black Dynamite" (2009) to "The Harder They Fall" (2021). The genre, born in the '70s as a riposte to Hollywood’s whitewashed action flicks, thrived on exaggeration: Pam Grier’s Coffy blasting pimps in hot pants, Fred Williamson’s cool-as-ice vigilantes turning the tables on The Man. Simien nods to this heritage with affectionate irreverence—a soundtrack blending Zapp & Roger’s electro-funk with original cuts by musicians like Tarriona "Tank" Ball, whose soulful croons underscore the scares like a velvet noose. The horror elements, cribbed from "The Thing" and "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman," add a B-movie bounce: practical effects of writhing weaves (courtesy of makeup wizard Vincent Van Den Akker) that slither like oily eels, decapitations that splatter with the glee of Sam Raimi’s splatterfests. It’s not revolutionary— the possessed-hair trope dates back to Japanese urban legends and even "Desperately Seeking Susan"'s wig wars—but Simien infuses it with racial specificity, turning a schlock staple into a statement. Compared to, say, "Vampires vs. the Bronx" (2020), which blended zombies with gentrification gripes, "Bad Hair" is sloppier, its pretensions (the faux-documentary wrapper) clashing with its grindhouse guts. Yet it’s miles from the nadir of modern blaxploitation wannabes, like the phoned-in "Welcome to Sudden Death" (2020), which squandered its premise on CGI slop. Simien’s film earns its keep through sheer audacity: a climax in a TV studio where hair extensions erupt into a full-on follicle apocalypse, network execs fleeing as braids become lassos. It’s trashy, triumphant, and unapologetically Black— a middle finger to respectability politics that says, "If we’re gonna go low, let’s go follicular." Performances are the glue holding this hot mess together, with Elle Lorraine anchoring the anarchy as Anna. A relative newcomer (post-"Insecure" bits and "The Chi"), Lorraine brings a quiet ferocity to the role: her wide eyes betray vulnerability even as her posture stiffens into warrior mode, making Anna’s transformation from mouse to maneiac feel earned. Watch her in the salon chair, sweat beading as the weave takes hold—it’s a tour de force of micro-expressions, Lorraine conveying the thrill of reinvention laced with creeping dread. Hudgens, shedding her "High School Musical" baggage, chews scenery as Gogo with the relish of a villainess in a Tyler Perry fever dream: her passive-aggressive pep talks ("Honey, it’s just business—beautiful business!") drip with such calculated cruelty that you almost applaud her comeuppance. The ensemble shines in flashes: Lena Waithe as the sassy sidekick Sage, dropping one-liners like hairpins ("Girl, that perm’s got more attitude than my ex"); Jay Pharoah as the hapless host Brock, whose perm-pocalypse demise is a masterclass in overacting; and Lourd’s Julie, a coke-fueled exec whose arc from ally to antagonist plays like a "Veep" reject in acid wash. But Rowland and Usher steal the show, their star power elevating what could have been walk-ons into showstoppers. Rowland’s Sherri is a vortex of vanity and venom, her death scene—a weave-vs.-weave duel atop a rotating stage— a ballet of brutality that’s as choreographed as a Janet video. Usher’s Santrino, meanwhile, layers messianic swagger with underlying pathos, his final aria (a gospel-tinged wail as his locks liquefy) hitting emotional notes amid the splatter. Simien directs his cast with the looseness of a jam session, letting improv fuel the frenzy—resulting in dialogue that’s raw, rhythmic, and ripe for quotability. Technically, "Bad Hair" is a feast for the senses, Simien’s visual flair turning the mundane into the macabre. Cinematographer Tommy Oliver bathes the proceedings in a palette of electric blues and bruised purples, evoking the era’s VHS glow while nodding to Jordan Peele’s verdant dread. The KHAY sets—recreated in Atlanta’s Pinewood Studios with period-perfect detail—are a character unto themselves: control rooms cluttered with Betamax decks, green rooms papered in faded headshots, a hair-and-makeup trailer that doubles as the film’s id. Editor Terilyn Shropshire cuts with the jittery energy of a music video, cross-cutting between Anna’s close-ups and archival clips to blur past and present, reality and reflection. The score, a collaboration between Ludwig Göransson (fresh off "Black Panther") and a slew of R& B vets, pulses with synth stabs and trap beats that escalate the unease— a low hum under salon small talk building to a screeching crescendo during kills. Simien’s horror toolkit is playful yet pointed: slow-motion strands uncoiling like tentacles, POV shots from the weave’s "perspective" that disorient with fisheye frenzy, practical gore that’s gooey and gratifying. It’s not "Hereditary"-level dread— the scares lean more "Scream" than "The Witch"—but the integration of body horror with cultural critique is seamless, each snip of scissors echoing the societal shears that shape Black womanhood. Critically, "Bad Hair" polarized on release: a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, with praise for its "audacious energy" (Indiewire) tempered by gripes over "heavy-handed horror" (The Guardian). It underperformed viewership-wise amid pandemic streaming wars, overshadowed by "Lovecraft Country"'s prestige punch, but cult status has simmered since—fueled by TikTok recreations of the weave wars and podcasts dissecting its colorism. In 2025's hindsight, with Simien’s "Dear White People" series wrapping and his "Lando" Star Wars gig announced, it reads as a transitional tangle: a bold beta test for blending genre with grievance, flaws and all. Ultimately, "Bad Hair" is the cinematic equivalent of a botched box braids install—painful in patches, pretty in others, but undeniably you. Its lack of finesse frustrates, the obviousness a buzzkill in a genre that thrives on sly. Yet those punchy peaks—the industry takedowns, the star-spangled send-ups, the unflinching racial reckonings—remind us why satire stings: not through sermons, but through spectacle. As blaxploitation redux, it’s a worthy weave into the canon, far from flawless but fiercely felt. Watch it for the laughs that lacerate, the horror that hits home, and the reminder that sometimes, the crown you wear is the one worth killing for. In a world still straightening its edges, "Bad Hair" frizzes free—messy, meaningful, and magnificently mad.