FREAKY TALES - Mark Reviews Movies

Freaky Tales, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 3, 2025

Four stories with various degrees of connection play out in Freaky Tales, which imagines an Oakland of 1987 that is sort of real and kind of otherworldly. Co-writers/co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, with the latter having roots in that California city, might have found more success in an anthology movie, if only because there would be less pressure to tie all of these segments together in some way. Instead of focusing on making the narrative of each section satisfying, though, the filmmakers have tried to force all of them into a cohesive whole.

It simply doesn't work here, because the divide between each of the stories is so extensive. The first two, for example, start in the same location and revolve around groups within distinct underground music scenes in the city. One is a punk rock club, regularly attacked by a group of neo-Nazis, and the other is a hip hop venue, where a pair of young up-and-comers are enlisted to perform with a rising star of the scene.

There's something to way these two stories are unified on a conceptual level but not in practice on a narrative or thematic level. Once the third tale arrives, it announces a completely different approach, in terms of story and tone, and the fourth one has so much work to do to tie all of them together that the clever conceit of that story can't exist on its own. When one realizes the Nazis are the central through line of the whole movie, that fact kind of makes one wonder why the overarching antagonists are given more attention than anything or anyone else in the bigger narrative.

The answer, of course, is that some blatant villains are likely the easiest—maybe the laziest, actually—way to connect a group of stories that are so diverse in their storytelling, themes, and tones. We first meet the bad guys in the first chapter, following a prologue that suggests some sort of alternate or unspoken history of the city during this era. In the backdrop of each and every tale, there are hints of some supernatural forces at play, such as green lightning flashing through the sky, characters whose eyes or fluids glow a bright green, or a New Age group that insists it can teach ordinary people to have psychic abilities. None of that really comes into play until the final story, and by that point, the whole thing seems like an unnecessary element to spend so much time establishing.

Anyway, the neo-Nazis are routinely harassing various people, including those leaving a local movie theater. Some of those moviegoers include local punk-rock enthusiasts Lucid (Jack Champion) and Tina (Ji-young Yoo). They talk and have a bit of a mutual and unspoken attraction for each other, but that's unimportant. The main thing is that the Nazis show up at the club where they and other punks listen to live bands, start beating up patrons and wrecking equipment, and promise to return. The punks preach non-violence, but as one club regular argues, Nazis are always an exception to the rule.

That one ends with a climactic brawl, at least, which is more than can be said of the entirely anticlimactic second segment. It follows Entice (Normani) and Barbie (Dominque Thorne), friends who have started a rap duo and catch the attention of a local promoter (played by Jordan Gomes). He wants them to perform at a popular venue, and the entire story exists to hint at something more about its main characters, to witness a rap battle unfold, and to introduce Ben Mendelsohn as a no-nonsense and, at the moment, vaguely racist cop, who will arguably become the most important character in the larger narrative.

The third segment is both the most satisfyingly self-contained story and the one where Boden and Fleck's screenplay really starts reaching to wrap all of the tales together. It stars Pedro Pascal as Clint, a debt collector for hire, whose wife has been killed, whose newborn baby is still in the hospital, and who is at the end of his rope. A flashback to 24 hours prior shows how all of that happened, and Pascal's performance carries what is a pretty pedestrian gangster yarn that features an impressive but distracting cameo and ends on a cliffhanger that's quickly and passively resolved about 15 minutes later.

Boden and Fleck's final section does tie three of the four stories together in some way (The second tale really is an outlier, even the filmmakers' minds, apparently). It sees professional basketball player Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis), based on the real man but diverting into the realm of fictional urban legend, embarks on a blood-soaked revenge mission, after the Nazis orchestrate a coordinated string of robberies of the homes of himself and his teammates.

It's shallow and violent fun, at least, which feels more aligned with the occasional look (fake reel-change burns in the corners of the frame and some VCR tracking effects, for example) and pulpy attitude of the B-movie amalgamation that is Freaky Tales. The overall mish-mash of a result, however, comes up short as a stylistic exercise and, on the levels of both its individual stories and a whole one, a narrative.

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