{"id":49706,"date":"2025-09-19T18:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T22:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=49706"},"modified":"2025-09-22T14:11:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:11:35","slug":"bad-haircut-fantastic-fest-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/19\/bad-haircut-fantastic-fest-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Haircut [Fantastic Fest 2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A college loser gets more than a snip when he visits an insane barber in writer-director Kyle Misak\u2019s wild Bad Haircut, playing as part of Fantastic Fest 2025.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Billy is a college loser, striking out at a party (an impressive oner scans through all the people having all the fun Billy isn\u2019t in an impressive start). His friend claims it\u2019s Billy\u2019s bad haircut and high school clothes leading ot his low confidence. With another friend, they take him under their wings to awaken the new college self for the weak-willed young man. The first step is a trip to the barber, setting loose a hilarious, raucous adventure that will make Billy grow up, whether he wants to or not.\u00a0 Writer-director Kyle Misak\u2019s film is a trip, a blast of energy, a descent into the madness of Mick the Barber.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As noted, Billy is taken to the barber shop of Mick, a wildly exuberant, strange man with the look of an aging rockstar trying to hold on, well-worn from a largely lived life. Since Mick is Quite The Personality (capitalization intended), Billy (continually called the wrong name by Mick, and not the type to correct him) is really out of his element. It gets worse when his friends leave to pick him some new duds. As Mick is clearly unhinged, it puts Billy into increased discomfort. Mick and the film only get more off-the-rocker as it unfolds. Bad Haircut is a lot of fun, anchored by a strange and energetic performance from Frankie Ray as Mick.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was concerned as the film got going if it could sustain. At one hour and fifty minutes, how much could be mined from an unsure, unkempt kid dealing with the weird barber?\u00a0 I had nothing to be concerned about, as Misak packs Bad Haircut with twists, turns, and plot shifts. Every time Billy and the viewer settle into the current level of strangeness, Misak peels back and shifts to a whole new way to shock, surprise, and laugh. Secret basements, cops, girls in cages, ice cream trucks, bad suits, and worse hair. (It does have a too-long coda, though, near about 14 minutes; that could use a \u2026trim, heh). It gets darker, deeper, and more dangerous in gloriously insane ways.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the center is Mick, the barber behind the mayhem. \u00a0 Frankie Ray gives an incredibly spirited performance, chewing all the scenery he can. He\u2019s obviously having a great time, reveling in the insanity of the character; it’s a great joy to watch his madness unfold, as well as Billy\u2019s horror in reaction. I was reminded of Richard Brake, not only in his look, but in performance. Ray is Brake on cocaine energy. We never know what is going ot come from him next, a song, pulling out recreations of old movies, maybe even tacos! Or intense violence, Mick is the type of person even the most sure person can\u2019t guess what will come from any interaction. Frankie Ray has a history of dance and stunt performances within a variety of character parts, so he\u2019s used to using his body in interesting ways, and he does it with a pep, matched with a gravely, jokey menace to his voice. It\u2019s fun to try to read the truth into whatever he\u2019s saying or doing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Spencer Harrison Levin is a perfect foil for Mick as Billy. Much of his performance is based on reacting to everything breaking his brain, but he also balances by dealing with someone pushed out of their comfort zone and forced into action. The back-and-forth banter between Billy and Mick is bouncy fun, especially in his reactions to Mick\u2019s taking the piss out of him. Mick\u2019s the show, but Levin is the lead. If he couldn\u2019t keep it going, the move would just be a sideshow of the cavalcade of madness. Nora Freetly acquits herself as Sam, the girl in the cage; she\u2019s often reduced to a reactionary damsel in distress, but given enough outside of that to stand as a character. Shout out to Marin Klebba, recognizable from Pirates of the Caribbean and others, gaining laughs from a character bit. Jake Busey is also on hand as a \u201crecognizable name in a low-budget film\u201d as a cop.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bad Haircut is Kyle Misak putting everything out there, and I love him for it. A dark, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor pervades across Bad Haircut as a horror comedy. It\u2019s a freakshow of giddy violence. Now I don\u2019t give away how films unfold, but Bad Haircut dragged me around with surprise in how it shifted now and then, keeping fresh, fun, and funny.\u00a0 He shoots the film with Reid Petro in a manner to match the manic, combintedwith snappy editing by Ben Mills. The energy of the shoot matches Mick, keeping it moving besides the overlong coda.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bad Haircut, written and directed by Kyle Misak, is a fun, funny, violent, and wild film anchored by a wonderfully manic villain performance by Frankie Ray. I appreciate Misak going all in with the energy. Recommended! Bad Haircut is presented as part of Fantastic Fest, running September 18th through 25th in Austin, Texas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A college loser gets more than a snip when he visits an insane barber in writer-director Kyle Misak\u2019s wild Bad Haircut, playing as part of Fantastic Fest 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1284,12],"tags":[219,3778,477],"class_list":["post-49706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivalsevents","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-festival","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49736,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49706\/revisions\/49736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}