Streaming Shuffle
A short horror-comedy from one of the genre's most interesting new directors.
Horror fiction makes its best impression in the classical short story—concise enough, as Edgar Allan Poe put it, “to be read at one sitting.” Horror films have always followed the single-sitting rule1, usually even staying close to the ninety-minute mark, a refreshing trend in these bloat-prone days. It’s unsurprising, then, that the genre is a natural fit for short films. Get in, make an impression, get out.
Mariama Diallo’s “Hair Wolf” makes one hell of an impression. This is a blast, 12:14 seconds of tart horror satire that pulls off a punchy, pitch-perfect blend of jokes, barbs, and cinematic pleasures. For starters, this looks terrific. The costumes are gorgeous, as is the (plot-relevant) hair and makeup. The film’s nighttime scenes are lit in glowing jewel tones and sprays of neon, deftly creating the sense that its Black hair salon is an oasis of warm color on a desaturating street … until an invading white girl staggers in, droning out her request: “Braaaaaaids.”
The white girl, Rebecca—“Count Beckula,” heroine Cami (Kara Young) quips—is a monster of cultural appropriation. “Hair Wolf” spins the roulette wheel on metaphors for her—vampire, werewolf, zombie—and goes with whatever works for the moment and the joke: what matters is that all these creatures contaminate. At their worst, they don’t just kill you, they feed on you and change you.
Cami first squares off with Rebecca (Madeline Weinstein) in a hair supply store, and she wins—“I had to get her in the eyes with some Afro Sheen”—but not before Rebecca yanks out some of her hair. Cami retreats to a friendly salon, where everyone uneasily agrees that, juju-wise, it’s never a good thing for a hostile force to have control of your hair. It’s a little piece of you, and it gives them a way in to everything else.
In comes Rebecca, and while salon owner Janice (Trae Harris) tries to get the upper hand by overcharging her for the “funky,” Rihanna-like look she wants, Rebecca, of course, can’t be defeated so easily. And once she’s inside, she’s a vector for Instagrammable infection—“Viral,” she promise-threatens—and she’s spreading fast. One second, Damon (Jermaine Crawford of Wire fame) is appalled by her snapping a pic comparing their skin tones—she’s, like, almost as black as he is!—and the next, he’s dropping girlfriend Eve (Taliah Webster) to go off with her. He’s now an “All Lives Matter” guy (Crawford kills the delivery of this particular line).
The longer Rebecca stays in the salon, the more personal and cultural devastation she leaves behind. We cut to Janice and Eve’s new hair, magically relaxed and blonde; their new attitudes, now alternately compliant and despairing. Cami can try to pull Eve back to a sense of Black pride (no dice on George Washington Carver, but “De Niro loves us down” gets through, in one of the film’s funniest moments), but can the monster really be defeated? Or is it always there, lurking?
“Hair Wolf” may not be breaking any new ground, but it’s smart, funny, gorgeous, well-cast, and playful—and for all its humor, it hits some genuinely unsettling notes. Diallo would go on from here to write and direct the ambitious feature-length horror movie Master, which doesn’t quite come together but is dark, thoughtful, and memorable all the same; her career is absolutely one to watch, especially since she works well in multiple modes. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
“Hair Wolf” is streaming on Kanopy and the Criterion Channel and is also available on the producer’s website.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Conversation
What did we watch?
Justified, Season One, Episode One, “Fire In The Hole”
This has taken over my Wednesdays – might as well get past season one. On a basic level, this appeals to me for the exact same reason Elmore Leonard and also Deadwood appeals to me, in that it asks “what if everyone just talked really cool all the time?”. You may remember the article where a guy who hated Brandon Sanderson interviewed him, and one really good point that stuck with me from it was that Sanderson’s style is both florid and forgettable, because it describes a lot of things I don’t like and a few things I do, including Mr Leonard. It’s more about the cool vibes that occasionally hit an incredible high; the dialogue simultaneously demands my focus and washes over me.
Oddly, this is simpatico with one of the main themes of the episode. One theme we’ve been hitting a bit in Nath’s discord lately is that organised crime is generally done by people too stupid or lazy to make money legitimately. I don’t know if that’s true – though the industry must be affected by the way bad luck can easily wipe out institutional knowledge in a way you just don’t get in, say, nursing – but you can definitely see how much of Raylan’s job is talking rings around people much dumber than he.
Raylan has achieved a certain level of expertise, and his day job largely consists of combating people with far fewer resources than him on a number of levels – finances, guns, and skills – and blatantly overwhelming them. It’s not that he lacks any ambition, but he keeps himself in situations he can usually win while their reach usually extends beyond their grasp. You especially see this in his scene with Dewey – there’s no way Dewey’s ever gonna outsmart him, and Dewey’s smart enough not to just shoot a cop.
Meanwhile, Boyd is someone just smart enough to rule over idiots in a ‘one eyed man is king’ kinda way. I love the scene where Raylan points out that Boyd is not dumb enough to believe the Biblical justification for antisemitism, and that his goals are far simpler (thrills of violence meeting money); he’s smart enough to be able to rationalise his goals. In one way, Boyd is far less ambitious than Raylan, being exactly as smart but being content with ruling idiots; in another, they’re exactly the same, with Raylan rationalising his knocking around dumbasses with the rule of law instead of being relatively open about it the way Boyd is. It’s a very anti-copaganda idea with a copaganda veneer.
Biggest Laugh: “We have to get rid of the Jews. It’s in the Bible.” / “Where?” Timothy Olyphant delivers a perfect mixture of genuine curiosity as to the answer and total exasperation. Also a sucker for this: “Every precinct I ever worked, prisoner transport was always the shit detail. Chief always used it as punishment, but here? We all do it.” / “Even you.” / “Oh, hell no!”
Best Ownage: Raylan taking down Dewey the first time they meet.
“Read your Bible as interpreted by experts.” Boyd’s wink-nudge delivery there is great; it’s like he’s enjoying the chance to finally spout bullshit to someone smart enough to know it’s bullshit. (Shades of The Hateful Eight‘s Warren’s genuine reaction to Mannix liking the “ole Mary Todd” bit in the faux-Lincoln letter as a clever detail in a lie, actually, to hop between Goggins projects.)
I always wonder how much the difference between Raylan and Boyd comes down to the difference in their relationships with their dads. Boyd is the beloved son long enough, and loves his father enough for long enough, that he’s a natural fit as criminal heir; Raylan, on the other hand, can’t wait to get away from Arlo, who likewise wants him gone. And then he chooses a career that will aggravate Arlo profoundly, and I’m sure he gets some satisfaction from that. But you could also, of course, say the difference between them created the difference in how they respond to their fathers and how their fathers respond to them, so it’s impossible to say.
Please enjoy, what a terrific show. Probably seen the pilot four times.
I hear good things about this show.
Wait, have you never seen this one?
I’ve seen the first season, but never got around to finishing it.
I don’t remember if this is a first viewing for you, but if so, you have a very prescient sense of where this season is going in terms of tending flocks and daddy issues. It’s a good example of where a longer format allows the show’s creators can expand the themes buried within the story, something that Leonard tends to let slide in his emphasis on style.
Justified is an odd case where I feel like it eventually pushed the ideas beneath Leonard’s style far enough that they picked up their own momentum and put on their own weight, but then Yost–possibly in light of Leonard’s death, and the wish to honor him that way is understandable–tried to veer back into a more purely Leonardine mode, and that transition jars me a little too much (and also retroactively illuminated a fundamental disconnect I have with Leonard, as much I admire him). But S1-4, I think, particularly succeed at offering Leonard’s pleasures and developing them into something new.
Certain Fury
“Certain fury” describes the emotion you will have towards director Stephen Gyllenhaal if you watch this film. This had a great, deliciously kitschy poster that primed me for some glorious mid-’80s action schlock with a twist–copious blood squibs and female leads! No longer do you have to choose!–but after a good and very splattery opening, it starts failing in every way. It’s a riff on The Defiant Ones, with Tatum O’Neal and Irene Cara fleeing together and eventually bonding, but The Defiant One is–*checks notes*–good, and this is not. It tries for gritty, but it’s actually just sloppping rape and racism around without the skill or substance to do anything with it. (At one point, inspirational music tinkles and swells as O’Neal calls Cara a slur. This does not appear to be intentional. Nothing here appears to be intentional.) At some point, Gyllenhaal clearly just gave up–apparently no one even bothered with a take two for the guy who, actively on fire, just glumly says, “I’m burning. I’m burning”–but not, alas, soon enough to stop the movie from existing at all. This is under ninety minutes, and it somehow has as many endings as Return of the King. I did learn that Tatum O’Neal runs in a hilarious manner, though, so I guess that’s something.
Where the Sidewalk Ends – Not an adaptation of the Shel Silverstein poem. A pretty brutal cop investigating a murder probably committed by a known mobster accidentally kills a suspect and bends over backwards to cover it up. But when he gets involved with the dead man’s ex-wife (and when her father is arrested), the cop suddenly finds his conscience. Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney reunite with each other and with Otto Preminger for a fairly solid if not quite great noir. The Ben Hecht screenplay smooths out some rough spots, the acting is generally good, and the atmosphere is strong, but the ending is a bit pat.
Kojak, “Life, Liberation and the Pursuit of Death” – An up and coming ad producer witnesses two psych students dumping a body in the river, calls the cops, and has her life turned upside down by both good guys and bad guys. This one doesn’t really hold together well, and as the title suggests, it’s trying to examine the place of a young woman in a world that isn’t making it easy to succeed. If you are looking for James Garner-level support for feminism in white male heroes, look elsewhere. Guests include William Katt and his mop of hair.
Frasier, “Agents in America, Part III” – Frasier’s agent Bebe pulls out all the stops to get his client a big raise (and also break his contract). She also gets him drunk and seduces him. While Harriet Sansom Harris is very good as a character pretty much no one likes but everyone admits does a good job, the character bothers me. It’s two stereotypes in one, the pushy woman and the sexual predator, and it does not feel right. Plus there seems to be some suggestion that she both unattractive and older than Frasier and I disagree about the first and the second is not true at all. It all leaves me a bit itchy.
I’ve run into similar issues with parent show Cheers of course – there’s some latent meanness and misogyny to the sexual politics on both (though not all the time).
I’ve long said that I find Cheers to have a core of meanness that makes it hard to watch now. Rhea Perlman is great, Carla is a pain.
There is so much potential in the premise of WtSE (and a lot of style to burn) that it’s kind of sad that it backs off from the fatalistic edge of the best films of the noir era.
OTOH, I kind of love that the bad guy is smart enough to not do what Edwards wanted him to do.
Seven Veils – Random MoviePassing delivers! The first thing that stands out is how fantastic the opera within the film looks, it feels like a production I’d like to actually see. What’s this credits? Turns out director Atom Egoyan also directed this real staging of Salome (presumably under different circumstances) and scored a two-fer by making this film around it. The Canadian dollar stretches farther than you’d imagine!
The director (Amanda Seyfried in the movie, not Egoyan) is tasked with remounting a popular staging of the opera and told to “make it personal” before finding resistance to her personal touches by the board of trustees at most every turn. These personal touches reveal much about her and much about the now-deceased original director, maybe more than his widow would care to know. Meanwhile, machinations and misbehavior backstage boil over and threaten the production. It maybe (and fortunately) doesn’t have clean parallels to the stage show, but the sense of betrayal and melodrama feels very much of a piece. And we get glimpses of the opera itself that feel much more epic within the new context of the film that I imagine they would in the live-taped version we glimpse. A smart move to make something operatic rather than just film an opera.
Justified, start of Season 5: “A Murder of Crowes”, “The Kids Aren’t All Right” – well, I guess I’m ploughing straight on with this, since I was too tired last night to consider anything else. Immediately a different vibe to season 4, with a load of Florida and Detroit stuff in the early going, some new / returning locations for Raylan / Boyd to encounter Problems. Keeping expectations reasonable and having a decent time so far – if nothing else, the guest star casting is crazy at this point with Wood Harris and his brother, David Koechner, Amy Smart, Dave Foley and Xander Berkeley turning up across these two episodes as well as Michael Rapaport (who I hear is divisive here, I have no issue with him so far) as this season’s main new player, and Alicia Witt making a welcome appearance as his sister.
St. Denis Medical, “Listen to Your Ladybugs”
Not as much comedy this week for a more heartfelt, poignant episode. But it is pretty effective on that front, and I guess I’d say it shows the show can do this well. But I already had faith it could do that and still be funny, so hopefully we’ll get both. Anyway, one reason it really works well on the heartfelt side is that the stories involved, particularly with Joyce and Bruce, get them to break through the performance they’re putting on for their coworkers and the cameras.
It wasn’t unfunny, but I don’t have any stand-out laugh-out-loud moments. David Alan Grier is great with exasperation, though. And with one of the climactic moments of the episode, which is really effective in his hands. There are a lot of little funny things throughout, too– Ron’s exasperation with Keith, or Matt’s deadpan to Ron. (“You didn’t try to trade me, you tried to give me away for free.”)
The Shield, “Cherrypoppers” – Warned my friend upfront that this wasn’t a great episode but woof it’s even worse now, though I do enjoy the whole plumbing subplot and how it increases the tension of Dutch’s timeline. Most procedurals wouldn’t think of that, but they would feature the awkward blocking of the FBI agent randomly entering the shot to chat with Dutch at the end. That actor’s been on The Sopranos and a ton of other stuff, he’s an absolute pro, and he belongs on fucking Blue Bloods, not The Shield. (Not coincidentally its part of a string of episodes where Shane’s in Vegas AKA the network somehow doesn’t believe in Walton Goggins. I sincerely hope one of Landgraf’s friends gives him shit for that, like “Dude, you thought the Fallout guy couldn’t pull off your show?!”.)
My friend also pointed out how they’re deporting the only witness to the one guy’s crimes. Me: “Okay, yes, but they’re not gonna pull that shit again. This is The Shield, they don’t mess up after this season.”
That ending scene between Dutch and Danny is maybe the only time the show ever backed their actors into a corner with stagey, gear-grinding dialogue like that.
I do love that according to Shawn Ryan, after he gave Shane a big second episode, the network then immediately got so sold on Walton Goggins that they were plaintively asking, “So what’s Shane doing this episode? Where’s that guy?” all this time.
Ha, so they were in fact the audience asking what Shane was doing when he wasn’t on screen.
Looking forward to checking this out. The main advantage Criterion has over other services is their curation, and I love how they include shorts in their programming.
Whenever I realize I haven’t used my Criterion Channel subscription in a while, I try to at least check out a couple shorts. It’s so great to have them available.
Definitely checking this out tonight. Bad Hair on Hulu was also playing with Black hair and horror but the 20 minutes I saw actively looked bad (what happens when poor visual effects take out your whole movie!)
Lauren makes such a good point about how horror works well in the short form too. No chance to wear out its welcome or start feeling too implausible.
I’ve written one (as yet unreleased) horror short, and when my friend talked about expanding it into a feature, I dodged the subject because I really didn’t want to wear out our welcome. We had one idea and that idea was well-explored!
Da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da…
Jan Michael Vincent lives! (Though sadly he doesn’t.)
Glad someone picked up on that. I already made jokes in the MM Discord about Hair Wolf, the 80s sitcom starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine as odd couple barbers.
I was that show’s demographic: teenage males who thought helicopters with jet engines were cool. Dear lord, having seen Blue Thunder (surprisingly not cool) as an adult, I am a bit ashamed of teen me.
The theme song is a total banger, and also most of what I remember about the show.
Year of the Month update!
March is Silent Era Month, where you can join these writers in examining your favorite silent movies and anything else from the 1910s and ’20s!
Mar. 17th: Sam Scott: One Week/The High Sign/The Electric House
Mar. 20th: Cori Domschot: Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Mar. 24th: Tristan J. Nankervis – Birth of a Nation
Mar. 26th: Sam Scott: Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
Mar. 27th: Lauren James: The Well of Loneliness
Mar. 31st: John Anderson: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
And in April, we’ll be movin’ on up to 1999, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
Apr. 7th: J. “Rodders” Rodriguez: The Scooby Doo Project
Apr. 16th: Sam Scott: Spongebob Season 1, Wakko’s Wish, Elmo in Grouchland, and/or Bartok the Magnificent
Apr. 28th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Sixth Sense