Michael Baskin [Mathew Mackay] is an ordinary 11-year-old boy who lives with his father, Billy Baskin [Michael Hogan], a struggling artist who acts as the caretaker for the children, while his wife [Anna Vitre] attends to the estate of her recently deceased father in Australia. When news breaks that an abandoned mansion has burned to the ground, Michael and his friend Connie [Siluck Saysanasy] are drawn to explore the charred remains. Outside the mansion, Connie dares Michael to peek inside, and they encounter the tormented ghosts of the homeless residents who perished in the fire. This frightening encounter awakens a strange affliction that Michael comes to know as The Fright, and he wakes up the next morning to find that he has lost his hair.
The ghosts return in dreams to reveal a bizarre, topical hair-growth formula whose main ingredient is peanut butter. They warn Michael not to overdo the peanut butter, or dreadful things will happen. Michael’s first attempt to mix the formula is discarded by his father and his sister Suzie [Alison Darcy], who mistake it for something meant to be ingested rather than used on the skin. Undeterred, the ghosts return a second time to make amends for the money Michael gave to some homeless people, offering fresh instructions and a new chance to fix things. Michael manages to synthesize the formula again, applies it, and wakes to find that his hair is growing at an incredible, almost magical pace—filling his scalp in a matter of minutes.
Soon, the news of Michael’s extraordinary growth spreads, and his friend Connie notices the change. In a misguided attempt to “simulate” puberty, Connie experiments by applying a bit of the growth mixture himself, only to discover that the joke lands back on him as his own hair responds in kind. As the hair problem spirals, Michael and Connie find themselves suspended from school for their ridiculous, uncontrolled tresses. Desperate to restore normalcy, Michael searches for a remedy while Connie learns that yelling at the hair can temporarily halt its growth.
At this point, the school’s art teacher, the Signor [Michel Maillot], who forbids imagination and creativity, enters the scene. After being fired from the school, he sets his sights on Michael’s condition and abducts him, along with several neighborhood children, to operate a factory that uses Michael’s hair as the core of magical paint brushes. These brushes possess remarkable power: they paint whatever the user imagines, without requiring fine detail or skill, and the children are kept in harsh conditions as the work piles up. The factory’s grim purpose deeply unsettles Suzie [Alison Darcy] and Connie, who discover the operation and plot a rescue. Connie tries to intervene, but the Signor and his dog James overpower him. In a cunning move, Connie gets the Signor to paint a picture of the abandoned mansion, daring him to investigate inside. The move backfires when the growing “Fright” transfers to the Signor, who becomes bald and escapes, pursued by the now‑alarmed children. As the authorities close in, Michael’s family converge on the scene, and the Signor is arrested.
In the end, the Baskin family is reunited: the mother returns home, and the house steadies itself as Michael’s hair stops growing uncontrollably. The story closes on a note of quiet relief and renewed family warmth, with the fear and chaos of the earlier days fading into memory, leaving behind a strange but hopeful lesson about fear, growth, and the power of imagination—touched by the uncanny and the resilience of those who care for one another.
