Imagine a bad hair day gone terrifyingly wrong. And we’re not talking about your typical bad day where your hair simply does what it wants, but a horrific nightmare in which your hair is actually possessed and decides to turn on you. 

Writer and director of Dear White People, filmmaker Justin Simien’s new horror-satire film is centered around that creepy plot. Bad Hair is inspired by horror classics from the 1970s and ‘80s. Set in 1989, the film follows the story of a scalp burn survivor who experiences a bad perm and to cover the mishap decides to get a weave to impress her image-obsessed boss—what later turns out to be a demonic weave. 

Starring Elle Lorraine as the main character, Vanessa Williams, Lena Waithe, Laverne Cox, Jay Pharoah, Kelly Rowland, Blair Underwood, James Van Der Beek, and Usher Raymond, the film tells a uniquely Black story that was missing from the horror genre. 

“I follow my obsessions down the rabbit hole, and this one began with some conversations about, particularly a sub-genre of Korean horror films that deal with hair horror,” Simien told IndieWire back at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. “I felt like I haven’t really seen anything that’s pulling from all those different traditions, but is also Black, and is using those sort of cinematic techniques to interrogate and make us look at the absurdities of what Black women specifically, but what all marginalized people go through.” 

Simien explains that the weave ties in cultural and historical topics throughout the movie that deal with being Black in this country. The race-centric horror film arrives on Hulu on October 23. For now, watch the trailer below.