Fantastic Fest 25: “Bad Haircut” is John Hughes by Way of James Wan
There are few things in life worse than a bad haircut. As someone who grew up crying in salon chairs, afraid to speak up as my hair was chopped into a traumatic bowl cut, it’s safe to say that the 2025 Fantastic Fest world-premiering Bad Haircut speaks to a lingering pain. But writer/director Kyle Misak’s Bad Haircut is a bit darker than an extra inch or two trimmed off. It goes somewhere deeply weird and hilariously off-kilter. Bad Haircut lures you in with a cheap cut, but drags you into a fight for your life.
Billy (Spencer H. Levin) is a college kid with an unruly mop of hair. His two best friends, Dee (R.J. Beaubrun) and Sonny (Beau Minniear), are his biggest fans, pushing him to talk to the cool girls at the party. When that goes disastrously wrong, Dee and Sonny take Billy to the barber shop. As every teen movie would lead you to believe, all Billy needs to boost his self-confidence is to take off his proverbial glasses. In this case, he needs a haircut, and mysterious barber Mick (Frankie Ray) is the trusted choice of both Dee and Sonny. Believing they’re leaving Billy in good hands, the two head out to the mall to refresh Billy’s wardrobe. Alone in a spooky barber shop, Billy realizes that his friends have no idea who Mick actually is. Oh, and there’s a missing college girl (Nora Freetly) who just so happens to have also visited this barber shop. What are the odds, right?
courtesy of Bad Haircut
In a time of movies falling all over themselves to be considered elevated horror, it’s refreshing to see something like Bad Haircut that is, above all else, a blast. The opening is a strong introduction, announcing that this movie is going to be just like a college party. It’s going to be fun, inevitably get out of control, and end in a fight. That’s Bad Haircut, plus or minus a few bloody deaths, but hopefully your college kegger is without the murders and the fighting-for-one’s-life qualities that make Bad Haircut the chaotic ride it is. All of this partying and carrying on is not to say that the film is missing an emotional undercurrent. Bad Haircut opens a conversation about love in a way that isn’t heavy-handed or baked into the premise of the horror aspect of the film. Without giving too much away, Bad Haircut looks at people who have been unlucky in romantic situations and at the ways they view love. How do you get it? How do you keep it? If you lock it away in a cage, is that the same as a love that’s free to come and go as it pleases? These sound like lofty questions that don’t have a place in a film about a delusional barber, but Misak’s script seamlessly weaves these familiar, universal insecurities into the narrative.
Even though Bad Haircut takes place in the modern era, it feels a bit like the Coen Brothers were tasked with making a movie for the Brat Pack. Every poor decision builds on the last in a comedy of errors, while a sweet, awkward romance plays out in the background. At the end of the day, it’s a coming-of-age film about finding your place, standing up to the bullies, and choosing the way you want your life to unfold. Bad Haircut is a John Hughes movie that’s been hacked away at by James Wan, and the result is the sort of haircut people can’t stop asking you about.
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