Like Justin Simien’s upcoming horror film Bad here premiered at Sundance 2020, the premise made it a hot-ticket screening: the creator and director of Dear White People had made a film about evil waves. In the film, set in 1989, TV executive Anna (Elle Lorraine) hopes to make it big as VJ, but her new boss (Vanessa Williams) discovers her natural hairstyle as an afterthought, leaving Anna suffering from her first weave, in ‘ the hands of style maven Virgie (Orange Is The New Black breakout star Laverne Cox). From there, things go very badly for Anna and her office.
In the first trailer of the movie, Bad here plays more like direct horror than anything else. But the actual film is deliriously complicated. It’s part-camp comedy, part-gory body horror, and heavily tinted with cultural commentary. Like Simien said when we talked to him about the movie on Sundance, the wild mashup of Korean hair horror and Get out-style social criticism may feel strange, but it is very conscious:
I love movies when there is nothing but them. We had to get used to Brian De Palma. We had to get used to Stanley Kubrick. We had to get used to Roman Polanski – I do not go into the horrible nature of his real life and politics. As filmmakers, white men make us accustomed to the art they create. That being a part of it, these things feel right in my soul, so I will mix them in the way that feels right to me. Dear White People was the same way.
When I watch some of my favorite movies again, I’m surprised – I still remember that Carrie unlike when I see it. Same with It shines, en Body Snatchers, Dressed to kill, The Wicker Man. They actually have this unusual moment of screwball comedy, and sci-fi moments and camping, B-movie elements. And they just go together. What is the unifying thing about them all? That director is obsessed with all those things, so they just put them in their movies. Because of this Vertigo is so brilliant, even if nothing about it makes a fine sense, as if it should work. Hitchcock was just really obsessed with those things. I wanted to give myself the experience to follow that. Especially when it’s, “No one has tried this before and I probably would not do this.” That’s when I want to be, “Okay, I’m going to do that.”
Bad here arrives on October 23 to Hulu.
