Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Religious Music and Entertainment
The Total Stranger: Your Best Friend

The Total Stranger: Your Best Friend

Last updated on: October 22, 2022 at 1:31 pm by Chase Padusniak

The Total Stranger: Your Best Friend 2022-10-22T13:31:08-04:00 Chase Padusniak

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Mountains with a Mountain Hut (1921) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
This may as well be Claire’s life; it’s certainly how she feels.
Source: Wikimedia

It might be Sweeney Todd’s (2007) fault. When I hear about a barber-serial killer, I assume humor, or at least campiness. It just lends itself to black comedy, or at least hokey jeering. Defenseless victims in the perfect spot to have their throats slit, snake oil salesmen and Dickensian orphaned errand boys, dancing—as if in love—around human-flesh-filled meat pies. The darkest things occasion laughter because, well, what else are we supposed to do? The Stylist (2020) doesn’t go for laughs. It made me want to jump out of my skin and out the window. But its photographic strategy is baffling at times. Still, it’s a fun one, worth your time, especially if you love feeling like you’ve got the chicken pox for 90+ minutes.

The movie, directed by Jill Gevargizian, concerns Claire (Najarra Townsend), a hair stylist in Kansas City, Missouri who, we learn almost immediately, uses late-in-the-day appointments as an opportunity to drug, scalp, and kill her victims. Her first kill hints at her extreme social anxiety. She seems troubled even as the woman in the chair boasts that she’s cheating on her husband—something now only the “boy toy” and Claire know. She never seems to know what to say, a stranger to the world of human language, though hardly a problem in a job where listening counts for way more than talking.

Narratively, the throughline is Olivia (Brea Grant), a client of Claire’s, asking her to fill in at the last minute as her wedding hair stylist. Claire, shaken by her recent killing, defers at first, but eventually comes around. Olivia is so grateful that she invites Claire over for pizza and wine, and even has her come along to her bachelorette party. Claire, we begin to see, is not just socially anxious she’s obsessive. The small kindnesses shown her by Olivia, the fact that both of their fathers died when they were young, their ability to (if awkwardly) “girl talk,” convinces Claire that they’re soulmates.

For her part, Claire continues murdering. It becomes clear, for example, when she follows home one of Olivia’s bridesmaids who insulted her at the bachelorette party, that she kills out of a desperate sense of inadequacy, failure, and rage. Her self-consciousness [think the scene in Boogie Nights (2007) in which Philip Seymour Hoffman screams “stupid” and bangs his head against his steering wheel after coming on to Mark Wahlberg). It’s a terrible cycle, one seemingly common now more than ever—a person feels disconnected from the world, so they fear to speak up or befriend people, suspect everyone dislikes them, and then, by seeming so standoffish or awkward, end up fulfilling their own prophecy. Claire, however, can restrain herself. She doesn’t murder the bridesmaid, seemingly for Olivia’s sake. The movie works in large part because we don’t know exactly what Claire is capable of. Sometimes she kills people who are nice to her (like a local barista); other times, she runs away before murdering a woman who insulted her. She dons the scalped hairdos in a mirror in her basement. Then, at one point, she padlocks the basement, seeming to swear off killing. The Stylist keeps us guessing, and thus unsure of ourselves, ready to leap off the couch.

Take, for example, a scene late in the film. Claire feels Olivia is being distant and so she keeps pestering her, asking if she can help with the wedding. Olivia assures her it’s fine, but Claire keeps sinking lower and lower until she surprises her “friend” late at night in her work’s parking garage (“how did you know where I worked?” asks Olivia. “You told me! I remember when you got the job. You were so happy!” responds Claire. The hair stylist is, we see, both the intimate confidant and the total stranger, a blank slate). Earlier on, Olivia’s had confided that she loved her fiancé, but that she didn’t always feel seen by him, a fact underlined when he interrupts her during a brief meeting with Claire. Claire, not understanding the context of normal human conversation, confronts Olivia with this fact during this (timid, but suspenseful) confrontation. The “soulmate” blows her lid: “I wouldn’t even let my mother say that to me a couple days before my wedding!”

At this point, we don’t know what Claire will do. Is she going to kill Olivia? Kill the fiancé? Kill the bridesmaid? Kill all the bridesmaids? Brood and ruin the wedding? None of the above. She slinks off and then, the night before the ceremony, sneaks into Olivia’s house. At first, we fear she’s got murder on the mind. That’s bad enough. But phew, no one seems to be home. She’s just creeping around—not so bad. Weird, but nothing too off-putting (for Claire anyway). But then she gets to Olivia’s bedroom, where she’d helped her button her wedding dress after wine and pizza. Claire stares at herself in the floor-length mirror where Olivia had stood those weeks ago. It gets worse. She goes through Olivia’s clothing and slowly, painstakingly selects a negligée. Claire puts it on and stares. But we aren’t done yet. She rifles through Olivia’s drawers and finds a vibrator. You can guess what happens.

All this time, we cut back-and-forth between claustrophobic shots in the closet to shots of Claire as seen from the doorway—the entire time we’re terrified someone is going to come home and catch the trespasser. Olivia does, just as Claire is, uh, getting going (by looking at a picture of her “soulmate,” of course). Our protagonist gets away, but not without breaking whatever’s left of her psyche and nearly destroying my ability to sit still.

That’s all well and good, but the movie has a problem. It’s not just that it’s not funny; rather, it is horribly, melodramatically languid throughout. Shots hold forever, I assume, to establish a slow, suspenseful tone. Shots of vacant city streets at night, lit by bare yellow lights, Claire standing in the middle or walking through—extremely typical. The effect, however, is more like that of a 90s crime or legal drama, maybe a second-rate neo-noir. We also get these dramatic sequences whenever she cuts hair. Operatic music begins playing as we endure a montage (and this happens more than once) of Claire’s hands running through and clipping the hair, her face in the background so filled with anxiety, so in her own head, that her hands are on a masterful autopilot—she is both absorbed in doing hair and totally distant from it. These odd choices give the film an over-dramatic tone, less like a horror or suspense movie than I had anticipated. At 102 minutes, I feel 10-12 of those could have been cut. We understand her loneliness and the terrifying nigh-inhumanity of her existence without having to watch her crawl about over and over. Cut a bit quicker; cut a bit more out.

But that’s really a small gripe. The Stylist still makes for excellent watching if you like wanting to molt and then hibernate. As often, horror proves itself an excellent vehicle for exploring a social question of the day: in this case loneliness and social anxiety. By externalizing these pathologies as murders, we get more than a self-indulgent cerebral movie about Psych 101. We get fun! Goosebump-raising, sadness-inducing fun, but fun, nonetheless. And that’s what it’s all about!

Health, Fitness and Religion

Previous Post

October 20, 2022

Which is the Original Bible? Is it the Catholic One?

Next Post

November 5, 2022 Elizabeth Taylor's Roman Holiday

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Academia Culture Politics Reviews Theology Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 July 2021 December 2020 November 2020 July 2020 May 2020 April 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 August 2019 July 2019 April 2019 March 2019 December 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Psalm contains "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalm 51 Psalm 119 Psalm 1 Psalm 23