Based on Jill Gevargizian’s award-winning short of the same name, The Stylist reunites the director with actress Najarra Townsend. She stars as Claire, a hairstylist who becomes obsessed beyond with her clients. One of them, Olivia (Brea Grant), is a bride with has made the horrible mistake of hiring Claire for her big day.

Let me sell this movie in the best way that I can: Becca hates nearly every modern horror movie that we watch together and she liked this because of how dark and strange that it was.

Claire styles hair by day and at night, she kills and takes the scalps of her victims, becoming them for a short time. She becomes obsessed with Olivia’s perfect life as she becomes more of a friend than just a stylist and tries to hide her collection of scalps and stop killing. But can she change who she is as easily as she puts on new bloody masses of hair?

Be warned: my wife also has an incredibly strong stomach when it comes to slashers and there were moments in this film that nearly upset her. The scalping scenes are on par with Maniac for their bloodletting, which is pretty much as high as I can praise a film.

It’s astounding that a modern film can synthesize the slasher with the color theories of the giallo while not playing the story for laughs at all. It allows us to sympathize with a character that we should despise. It also has a female point of view about a woman attempting to navigating her way through the world and the issues she faces as a female by, you know, murdering nearly every woman she gets close to. It’s one of my favorite movies that I’ve watched so far this year and definitely recommend it with that caveat — there is a fair amount of blood. But hey — you need it for an ending this in your face.

The Stylist is streaming exclusively on the ARROW platform in the US, Canada and the UK.

If you’d like to see the short that this was based on, you can watch it on YouTube.