Haircuts are one of those conveniently inconvenient tasks that everyone has to make time for. Haircuts are a hygienic routine and a mode of personal renewal. Shape-ups keep a current look maintained. New styles can change how a person looks. When you get a haircut, it removes and replaces the old with the new. In that measured process, appearances can become more than skin deep.
The Stylist tells the story of Claire (Najarra Townsend), a hairdresser-turned-serial killer who scalps the hair of her clients and wears them as trophy wigs. The female Sweeney Todd suffers an identity crisis based on her murky family history. Her inability to relate to anyone, and the struggle between empathy and twisted euthanasia, only compounds Claire’s existence. Dentists, optometrists, restaurateurs, barbers, and hairdressers all have to be met at a certain point out of necessity. The Stylist meets its customers from root to tip.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Arrow Films
Splitting hairs about the nuanced and disturbed mind of a serial killer is hard to argue for and against. The Stylist has a psychological stranglehold that begins with irony. The redheaded locks of Claire make her a natural beauty, but she thinks otherwise. Under her countenance lies a bedraggled rat’s nest that only Claire can see. She cannot be herself because she no longer wants to be herself. Her systematic killing is akin to those in Dexter. The exception is, her victims are not morally conscience when they get their hair done. Unbeknownst to them, they reveal things to Claire, who seems to give a silent judgment of “no one will miss you.” This cues Claire to share a sedative-laced glass of wine (The Cask of Amontillado style) and cut them out of their shallow lives.
Split Ends
Claire brings a whole new meaning to helmet hair. A touch of black comedy does support her unhinged character flaw. Her compulsions to relieve stress through hair removal are as uncomfortable to watch as her anxiety-induced panic attacks. If one can also ignore the lack of surveillance and security, the possibility of not suspecting the submissive Claire becomes more believable and precarious. As the axiom goes, “it’s always the quiet ones,” but on the contrary, silence screams volumes.
Claire simultaneously cannot stand the sight of herself while she attempts to assume another’s personality. Shortly after they have gone to the salon in the sky, Claire is left empty once again with their passing memory. No attainment, no satisfaction, no connection. Her constant cycle of sadistic self-care leaves you filled with curiosity and contempt for the parties involved. Some people give Claire a chance, but to themselves, think or say less of her. Others who mean well have their own moments of emotional toil or confession, the worse side of human nature, which Claire takes as abuse or neglect, leading her to acts of violence.
A Good, Bad Hair Day
Audiences will hesitate to defend and convince themselves to sympathize with the troubled Claire. Violence in the form of voyeurism and vicarious violations tend to hamper Claire’s volition to rebel and oppose her past and present. She is trapped by her past, and her effort to let it go is surpassed by her change of hairdo, a maladaptive defense mechanism. Claire’s docile and submissive behavior is comparable to introversion as well. When she meets someone old or new, she is carefully observing their actions and reactions. They are undergoing a litmus test and their grade will determine how long they have until she breaks out her favorite shears. As far as movie murderers go, Claire is an unconventional one.
She does not follow any rules per se, if anything, she breaks rules and establishes new ones. The writing is a slow burn and ordinary, if not intentional, to the point of being a dramatized reenactment for a crime reality TV show. Interactions are superficial enough where any character development hits one dull note in service of the Missourian killer. Inklings of Claire’s past are brushed off unceremoniously steeping her further down in her mire and brooding episodes. The horror drama draws inspiration from Women Who Kill and how women come out of their specific oppression by taking drastic measures. Claire’s oppression becomes more self-inflicted as the plot progresses. Her circuitous behavior collapses as her own tolerance for people is challenged and wanes. The harebrained schemes of the hairdresser would be a cut above the rest if it wasn’t for her vague backstory.
Vague in the sense that it does not present any signs of injustice or mistreatment beyond neglect. Claire is supposed to represent the everyman, a character that is relatable to a fault, but she is outright forgotten when all is said and done. The Stylist, for better and worse, wins by a hair with its numb foray into moral ambiguity through cognitive bias, leaving its anti-femme fatale in the dark; a place where feeling as seeing becomes both a bias and a visual blind spot.
