By George & Josh Bate
After 35 years in the film industry, renaissance man Frankie Ray delivers a career-defining performance in the new horror comedy Bad Haircut, premiering at this year’s Fantastic Fest.
Bad Haircut follows Billy (Spencer Harrison Levin), a college student struggling with his self-esteem. After a particularly embarrassing encounter with some girls at a party, Billy’s friends Sonny (Beau Minniear) and Dee (RJ Beaubrun) take him to get a haircut to boost his confidence and charisma. The barber of choice for this haircut is Mick (Frankie Ray), an eccentric and bizarre man, who forces Billy into a night from hell that progresses from odd to disturbing to downright horrifying.
Mick lays at the center of Bad Haircut, a horror film and dark comedy that works as well as it does largely due to how transformative Frankie Ray is. Ray’s Mick is a mix of Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs, Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, Ted Levine’s Buffalo Bill, Mark Duplass’ serial killer from Creep, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, and even a few characters from Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses, but, despite this amalgamation of parallels, harbors something truly singular. Enchanting perfectly describes Ray as Mick, chewing up every inch of the scenery with a wild, uncanny, and tonally cognizant performance. It is simply impossible to not be entranced by every line, facial expression, and body movement of Mick. One second, Mick is as scary as horror movies get. The next second, he is hilarious, bopping to ‘Ms. New Booty‘ while rocking a wild blue tuxedo and top knot. And the next, he is pitiful in a strangely emotional manner. All of this speaks to just how deftly Ray and filmmaker Misak navigate a tricky tone that ensures an oddball performance doesn’t dampen upon the thrills. Instead, the performance and tone work seamlessly together and foster a truly memorable horror movie villain.
In an exclusive interview with The HoloFiles, Frankie Ray dives deep into how he crafted such a complex, disturbing character as Mick and gets candid about how he drew upon difficult experiences from his past to craft who we hope will soon be regarded as a horror movie icon. Check out the interview below….
Check out our review of Bad Haircut here. Read below for a glimpse of what we thought of the film….
Bad Haircut does for haircuts what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean. Largely due to a stunning, unsettling, and career-defining performance from Frankie Ray as the bizarre and eccentric barber Mick, filmmaker Kyle Misak’s debut feature deftly tows a tonal balance for a movie that elicits terror, laughs, and empathy in equal measure. Due to the strength of Ray’s performance, Mick, who quickly has risen to be among the apex of our favorite horror movie antagonists in recent years, makes Bad Haircut the kind of movie you can’t take your eyes away from, even when the plot becomes a bit predictable and characters make frustratingly baffling decisions. Spencer Harrison Levin, meanwhile, plays opposite Mick with a performance that becomes more compelling throughout the film, correlating with his character Kyle’s progression in confidence. Closing out on a charming and even endearing note, Bad Haircut finishes strong and exhibits a masterful use of licensed music that rivals that of James Gunn’s work on the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. If you thought haircuts were frightening before this movie, think again. Sweeney Todd, eat your heart out.