The Stylist is the first feature length film from director Jill Gevargizian. It's reminded me of two movies in particular, the plot felt very derived from William Lustig's "Maniac" as it deals with a serial killer who scalps women, but I would argue that the stylist takes this concept and plays with it in a way that is more unique and interesting than the film it is clearly paying homage to.
The Stylist also seemed to me to have taken an influence from Dario Argento's Susperia with it's overly saturated colour palette.
It was really nice to see lead actress Najarra Townsend given a better script to work with as the only movie I'd send her in before this was the awful "Contracted" released in 2013. As terrible as that film was I liked her performance and hoped to see her in a movie that actually deserved to have her in it.
Najarra Townsend is actually very good in this, my only criticism is that you have to suspend a lot of disbelief when watching her character Claire, who although is socially awkward, Claire is far too integrated into society to be a person that occasionally scalps her clients and wears their hair in her basement. But it's a movie after all and you can't fault it all that much for not being believable, it's not supposed to be grounded in reality and there is a slight surrealist dreamlike quality to the film, so it never becomes all that much of an issue.
The story of The Stylist subverted my expectations a little,
I presumed that it would be about a hair stylist who becomes a serial killer and the majority of the films runtime would be dedicated to the slow progression of a person going completely insane. Instead it chose to focus mainly on the cooling down period of the killers career as they battle with themselves trying to fit in and fight against their desire to keep killing.
The last shot was completely predictable but it's what I wanted it to be so I wasn't unhappy with it at all. for a mid-tier horror movie I had a good time with it.
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