Freaky Tales
Written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Starring Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn and Jay Ellis
Classification 14A; 107 minutes
Opens in theatres April 4
There may be no more disappointing feeling than watching a promising movie slowly disintegrate before your eyes.
When the new action-comedy Freaky Tales kicks off, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s neon-slicked fantasia feels like sitting in the front row of a prize fight: all thrilling, nerve-wracking, sweaty, bloody good fun.
Set in 1987, the film weaves together four interconnected stories chronicling the punks, rappers, cops, gangsters, and neo-Nazis who run on the fringes of Oakland, Calif., including an opening chapter following a group of teens whose favoured gathering spot is threatened by a bunch of Doc Martin-sporting racists. The segment is swiftly paced, brutally staged, expertly soundtracked, and given a kind of retro-grindhouse varnish (synth-heavy score, boxy aspect ratio, faux “cigarette burns” denoting reel changes) that endears it to a certain generation of moviegoers raised on VHS rentals (guilty).
But then the movie just keeps going and going, the spirit remaining the same but the energy and inventiveness dipping considerably. The second of four chapters, following a pair of aspiring rappers whose skills are tested onstage, is enjoyable enough if ultimately inconsequential to the film’s overarching Pulp Fiction-esque narrative. The third chapter, following a gangland enforcer played by Pedro Pascal, has its moments – including a cameo by a genuine superstar whose appearance shockingly hasn’t been spoiled in the time between Freaky Tales’ Sundance 2024 premiere and today – but also flatlines. And the fourth segment, featuring an entirely fictional night in the life of real NBA All-Star Eric Augustus “Sleepy” Floyd (played here by Jay Ellis), is an exhausting exercise in lazy, meaningless violence.
Co-directors Boden and Fleck, who are returning to their indie roots here after a quick jaunt to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2019′s Captain Marvel, seem to be enjoying themselves as they paint their hometown of Oakland a bright crimson red. But soaking the streets in blood is only as much fun if you also have enough compelling characters to splash in such puddles of gore. And Freaky Tales has neither the patience nor the depth to imagine any one person or story with a legitimate hook.
Even a supporting performance from Boden and Fleck’s frequent collaborator Ben Mendelsohn (who also costarred in the pair’s Mississippi Grind and Captain Marvel) cannot elevate the experiment into something beyond a half-baked lark. Wake me up when it’s 1988.
