Fantastic Fest 25: Cast and Crew of “Bad Haircut” Talk Homegrown Thriller Comedy
Everyone remembers the time they got a bad haircut. Some of us lived through our middle school years with a bowl cut that wasn’t doing anyone any favors. In the case of Kyle Misak’s 2025 Fantastic Fest-premiering film, Bad Haircut, the problem isn’t with the haircut itself, but with the barber who wields the scissors. Ahead of the world premiere, writer/director Kyle Misak, producer Jon Petro, and actors Spencer Harrison Levin, Frankie Ray, Nora Freetly, RJ Beaubrun, and Beau Minniear sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to chat about their madcap horror movie.
Billy (Harrison Levin) has never felt cool, and his two best friends (Beaubrun & Minniear) are convinced that a haircut will change everything. They take him to their barber, an eccentric man named Mick (Ray), and leave Billy there while they go shopping. The longer Billy finds himself in Mick’s chair, the more unsettled he becomes. It also doesn’t help that a girl (Freetly) has gone missing and signs are starting to point toward Mick having something to do with it.
The weird enigma that is Mick was inspired by Misak’s own barber experiences in college.
“He felt like such a character, someone who belonged in a movie,” Misak recalls. “He was the catalyst for creating a story that was loosely based on real events and then embellished to create something really crazy.”
Once Misak had an idea and a script, he needed actors to bring them to life.
“Kyle sent me a message out of the blue on Backstage,” says Harrison Levin. “It was one of the worst pitches I’ve ever gotten for a film. He was like, it’s about a college kid who gets a bad haircut. I was like, boy, that sounds riveting, man. Then he sent it to me, and it was one of the craziest rides you’ve ever read.”
courtesy of Bad Haircut
“I was the opposite of Spencer,” Minniear chimes in. “I was fully engaged from the jump. Kyle’s able to paint a picture through storytelling and you’re like, yeah, I want to be a part of this machine, for better or for worse. It was all for better.”
“This is my first film,” Freetly adds. “I don’t really check my email. Not really great at replying to people. Kyle actually reached out to me on Cameo. I searched him up, and I was like, oh, this is actually legit. I had a call with them and I saw their vision. Kyle has a clear understanding of how to articulate things in a way that an actor can actually uphold them and feel themselves with it. It was a very, very proud first film for me, for sure.”
“Well, when I got the email, it was titled Bad Haircut. At first I thought it was kind of a jab at me, like, oh, my haircut’s bad,” laughs Beaubrun. “Then I actually read the script and I was like, this is insane. It seemed amazing. Not something you usually see a lot.”
“My first question was, who’s getting a haircut? Because that’s not me,” jokes Freetly.
Even though Bad Haircut is playing at one of the most beloved genre film festivals, Misak doesn’t consider it to be a horror movie. Beneath the mayhem of a haircut going horribly wrong is this undercurrent of emotional vulnerability that plagues all of us. Do all of us inherently deserve love?
courtesy of Bad Haircut
“I always thought of it as a thriller comedy,” Misak says. “I just thought it was interesting to try to create a character with Mick, that is kind of a villain character, but because it was based on a real person, there were parts of him that felt really endearing and a lot of things that did not feel that way. He was kind of this weird dichotomy of a character. I think that just kind of came through with trying to put that person on paper.”
“I think really the heart of it comes from these guys right here,” continues Misak. “You see their friendship and you see Mick long for that. Because this group of friends is so genuine, you see that he really wants that. It makes you have empathy for him. Maybe some people don’t. We wanted to try to make sure there was heart in the movie and it wasn’t just a slasher.”
Much of Bad Haircut takes place within the confines of Mick’s barbershop. It’s a three-hander of sorts between Harrison Levin, Freetly, and Ray, who spent hours upon hours on the small set of the shop. Harrison Levin’s and Freetly’s characters are fish out of water in the barbershop, whereas this is home for Ray’s Mick. There’s a stifling nature to this set-up that allowed these actors to push themselves further.
“When you’re only working with one camera angle and when you’re only really seeing the set from one angle for yourself, it can really kind of make you feel that isolation,” Freetly explains. “Also, there’s the vulnerability that everyone can see you, kind of like you’re on display. My character also can’t leave. I think it breaks down a wall while putting another wall up. That’s when those micro-nuances of storytelling can really come into play rather than very physical, behavioral stuff like that.”
courtesy of Bad Haircut
“We were in there for five weeks or so, and you do get stir crazy for sure,” adds Harrison Levin. “When we were wrapping out each one of those sets, I was very relieved each time because I was like, I have to get out of here. It’s very claustrophobic. I spent a lot of time in that leather chair. Frankie and I both. It got heated in there, both conversationally and then temperature wise, it got so hot in there. Wearing that nylon cape too. Wardrobe was shoving towels up the back of my shirt because I was sweating through it. Is that the kind of image you were hoping for?”
“There was so much there,” Ray says of his fictional barbershop. “I would walk around, just look at everything and touch everything. As an actor, the hard part about auditioning is you’re not in that place. You stress and worry about your lines. Am I going to remember? Am I going to be able to connect? Once you walk onto their set, for me, it was just I’m home. This is my spot. It’s my space. It felt so much like Mick.”
“I have a very different perspective than the rest of the cast because it’s my world,” Ray continues. “As I walked around and looked at everything, it really dawned on me how twisted Mick is. How what you put around yourself is a direct reflection of who you are. It was also hot, very, very hot.”
Beaubrun’s and Minniear’s experiences were on the opposite end of the spectrum. They weren’t trapped on the hot set of a barbershop. Their characters were having shopping montages and enjoying themselves before learning that their friend was in danger. Beaubrun and Minniear are the comedic relief in an already comedic film, but didn’t find themselves stressed by their roles as the movie’s jokesters.
“Beau made it very simple,” Beaubrun says. “He gives you a lot of jabs, so you can just easily play to it and feed into it. He makes it really simple.”
courtesy of Bad Haircut
“RJ is just about the funniest person I’ve ever met,” adds Minniear. “They’ve got the set built specifically for these really high, intense scenes, and then some of the other scenes that we did…I mean, because there was such a focus on storytelling in the barbershop, our scenes were kind of like, if we get there, we get there. Scenes that weren’t are crucial to the story. RJ and I were just like, great, you guys are done in the torture chamber? Let’s go have fun for an hour.”
“There’s one scene in the elevator where I think we did two takes,” continues Minniear. “We had two people screaming at us to get out of the elevator. We were in a live spot by a hotel. The sound wasn’t great, there was nothing hooked up. It was just RJ and me being like, you ready? It was us just kind of making shit up. Compared to what Nora, Frankie, and Spencer had to go through, we had a luxurious experience. We were just hanging out.”
“To give Beau and RJ even more credit, there were scenes in that movie that I think didn’t even existed until we got together pre-production,” adds Harrison Levin. “I think what’s really special about the friendship in the movie is that you kind of buy it immediately, you know?”
Bad Haircut was shot fully on location in Michigan (and a “sliver of Indiana,” according to Misak). It’s home to both Misak and Petro, which made the location a no-brainer because of the connections they have and the practicality that affords.
“It just made sense for us to make it in Michigan because we were able to get favors,” explains Misak. “When you’re doing an indie movie, you have to be able to get a lot of things for free and favors from people. We were also practically working full-time jobs and were the ones largely doing most of the pre-production work. We had to be on the ground gathering props, building sets, location scouting, all that kind of stuff. The only way we could have made the movie was to make it in our backyard.”
courtesy of Bad Haircut
“That is what I think I respect most about Kyle and Jon,” says Harrison Levin. “They’re true indie, guerilla filmmakers who get it done regardless of an insane amount of challenges. I’ve never been on a film set where it almost seemed like the universe was trying to stop a movie. I think it was their perseverance that pulled us through it.”
“The cliche thing that I think a lot of people say, but it’s 100% true, is that finishing a movie is a miracle,” Petro adds. “In this case, it felt like multiple miracles. Kyle and I were in the trenches. We shared a hotel room in Indiana for weeks and we were together all the time.”
“There were a lot of challenges from day one,” Petro continues. “There was an actor strike. We didn’t even know for 3 or 4 weeks, while we’re still building sets, if we could even shoot the movie. Everyone was telling us, frankly, that we could not make the movie, and we might as well give up. While we were building sets and spending egregious amounts of money that we didn’t have. The whole thing is wild, right? In that way, it’s also equally rewarding to be where we’re at now. It’s so exciting to look back and know that it wasn’t easy. It was earned, not just for us, but everybody involved, the crew and the cast. I’m really excited for the world to see it and for us to be in a situation finally where we can sit in a theater with lots of people who are moviegoers who love this stuff and watch our movie.”
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