Skip to main content
Arrow Video: The Stylist (2020) - Reviewed
 |
| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
The
debut film of writer-producer-director Jill Gevargizian The Stylist is another one of those horror films that started out
as a short film ala Lights Out or Come Play before being expanded to
feature length. It also is another tale
of an awkward, sad and lonely girl who eventually descends into madness and
goes on some sort of violent and bloody rampage. This time around the girl is a hairstylist
named Claire (Najarra Townsend) who drugs and scalps her clients before wearing
the severed scalps around the house like a wig.
Originally conceived in 2016 as a short before being reworked into a
feature in 2020, The Stylist is
closest to Lucky McKee’s May as a
portrait of an isolated woman on a downward spiral towards madness and
murder.
Released
in a limited edition set including the film’s evocative, Angelo Badalamenti
sounding score by Nicholas Elert on a CD soundtrack album, The Stylist like Starry Eyes before
it starts out as a slow burn before building towards a full throated shriek
dripping with crimson and chum. If the
opening scene alone doesn’t eject you from your seat, nothing else will. That said, this gruesome shocker is also very
beautiful to look at thanks to lush widescreen cinematography by Robert Patrick
Stern.
Mostly
however the film boils down to two characters, Claire and new client Olivia
(Brea Grant) who brings her into her entourage of bridesmaids who sense
something off about Claire. Brea Grant
as the normal but anxious girl on the precipice of her wedding plays
brilliantly off of Najarra Townsend’s foggy and distant demeanor. These are two operating on entirely different
wavelengths who neither understand one another nor sense the impending danger
arising from their awkward “friendship”. A
brutal and gory but also evocative, stylish and moody shocker, The Stylist is a solid new horror film
which was a labor of love for its writer-director and hard to shake images that
are burned into your mind’s eye long after the film is finished. Yes we’ve seen this kind of sad-girl-turns-bad
film many times before but Gevargizian puts her own unique spin on the premise
and creates an atmosphere and mood that’s at once delicious to take in offset
by jarringly grisly vistas that only intensify as the film progresses. One of the best female driven horror films of
the year and a promising debut for one of the horror scene’s newest and most
exciting purveyors.
--Andrew Kotwicki
