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. 

Courtesy of Arrow Films

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”. 
 
Courtesy of Arrow Films

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