Many of us who have tried to dye, bleach, relax or chemically treat our hair at home may relate to the anxiety in the first scene of Justin Simien’s follow-up to “Dear White People,” “Bad Hair.” An older cousin tries to help her younger cousin relax her hair for the first time, but the little girl begins to complain that the product is burning her.
Like many first-time attempts, the experiment doesn’t go well, but this is just the start of many hair-related frights to come in the film, which had its world premiere on Thursday, the opening night of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.