Ouai casts Victoria Pedretti as the Final Girl in Chopped, a three-part slasher series about bad haircuts

Key Takeaways

• Hair care brand Ouai has cast Victoria Pedretti, star of You and The Haunting of Hill House, in its first scripted series.

• Chopped is a three-part horror comedy in which a masked villain called The Chopper terrorises Ouai staff with badly used scissors.

• Ouai's $50 Bond Repair Balm and $32 Leave-In Conditioner play the role of the bandages that heal the victims' hair.

• The episodes were released on Ouai's Instagram from 26 to 28 October, with a screening at Cinespia in Los Angeles on 30 October.

Ouai has made its first move into scripted entertainment with Chopped, a three-part slasher spoof starring Victoria Pedretti as the Final Girl who has to work out who is stalking the brand's office with a pair of scissors. The victims of The Chopper, the masked villain at the centre of the story, are Ouai employees left with terrible haircuts, so the stakes are about split ends more than survival, and the hero has to solve the mystery before her own hair becomes the next casualty.

Ouai's Chopped stars Victoria Pedretti across three episodes released on Instagram from 26 October

The series follows a simple slasher structure, with "Heat Damage" arriving on 26th October, "Blonde Blindness" on 27th October and the finale, "The Final Girl", on 28th October, and each episode borrows the rules of the genre while swapping the knife for a pair of hairdressing shears. The episode titles double as a list of the hair problems Ouai sells products to fix, so the plot and the product range are working from the same script, and the setting of the brand's own office adds the feel of a workplace comedy to the horror.

The products appear as the cure, since Ouai's Bond Repair Balm and Leave-In Conditioner act as bandages that heal the hair of the employees who fall victim to The Chopper. The Bond Repair Balm costs $50 and is a three-minute in-shower treatment for strengthening damaged hair and reducing breakage, while the $32 Leave-In Conditioner is a mist that detangles, smooths frizz and protects hair from heat up to 232°C, which makes it the obvious defence against an episode called "Heat Damage".

The visual references go well beyond a generic Halloween costume, as director of social media Joellen Lu said "We were really inspired by 1970s horror and contemporary filmmakers who are also drawn to that era," and explained that the team wanted to pay homage to giallo films and the work of Dario Argento. That influence shows up in the recurring shots of a black-gloved hand holding the villain's shears, which is a knowing nod for horror fans and a slightly alarming image for anyone who has ever sat nervously in a salon chair. Lu added that the team also wanted to pull in cult elements from other films of the 1970s such as The Devils, while aiming for the grain and nostalgic feel of the early 1980s with dark landscapes broken up by bright colours, so the series looks closer to a festival short than a sponsored post. She added that the social media teasers for the theatrical re-release of The Devils had drawn her in by making an older film feel timeless through a scroll-stopping visual treatment and score, and the team set out to adapt that approach for its own horror comedy.

Victoria Pedretti starred in The Haunting of Hill House in 2018 before You and The Haunting of Bly Manor

Pedretti's casting draws on a run of roles that began with The Haunting of Hill House in 2018, where she played the adult Nell Crain, before she became Love Quinn in the second and third seasons of You and then led The Haunting of Bly Manor in 2020 as Dani Clayton. Speaking about the series, Pedretti also shared her own thoughts on beauty, saying that she had been brushing her naturally straight hair more lately after usually favouring as much texture as possible. She explained that "I was societally taught that beauty stems from perfection and isn't something I can define for myself," before reflecting that "What we believe is beautiful can shape the world we build for ourselves." She also said that beauty by anyone else's definition was "not a hill to die on," which is a fitting line from an actor whose characters have so rarely had an easy time on screen.

Ouai was founded by celebrity hairstylist Jen Atkin in 2016, and in December 2021 Procter & Gamble agreed to acquire the brand for an undisclosed sum, with Atkin staying on as chief creative officer. Martinez has explained that the idea for Chopped came from the way people talk about hair as either good or bad, saying "So, if bad hair is the villain, damage is the thing to fear" and that the team "loved the idea of taking that literally," as beauty and horror both play by their own distinct rules and tropes.

Chopped is also getting a night out in Los Angeles, because the series will be shown at a special screening at Cinespia on 30 October before a sold-out showing of Jennifer's Body.