Anthology movies are always a messy affair almost by definition – I mean, how else would you describe a genre that requires that we patiently watch as it essentially starts over numerous times featuring entirely new characters and scenarios. However, that’s not to say some directors haven’t managed to wrestle the chaos into creating something magical. Robert Rodriguez managed it with Pulp Fiction, George A. Romero gifted us with Creepshow and let’s not forget Quentin Tarantino’s masterful Pulp Fiction; but while many filmmakers have strived to wrestle the chaos into touch, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have chosen to embrace it with the frenzied Freaky Tales, an 80’s themed quartet of tales that seems to want to be as scrappy as possible.
With such familiar faces as Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn and *checks notes* Tom Hanks on board to help spread the crazy, is Freaky Tales to freaky for its own good?
The year is 1987 and as flashes of green lighting are spotted in the sky above Oakland, California, we weave our way through a quartet of stories that overlap somewhat despite covering a wife range of subjects and characters. The first chapter, entitled “Strength In Numbers: The Gilman Strikes Back” sees young punk rock fans Tina and Lucid attending an Operation Ivy gig at 924 Gilman Street when it’s attacked by a roving gang of neo-nazi skinheads. As the pick up the pieces in the aftermath, all the punks get together to vote whether or not they should fight back and as Tina and Lucid start to fall in love, the latter gets the former a gift that could turn the tide of battle.
Next up is “Don’t Fight The Feeling” that sees aspiring female rappers, Barbie and Entice, get the big shot they’ve been waiting for when they’re invited to rap battle with Too $hort. But as Entice’s confidence starts to fail in front of a large crowd, a glowing green microphone may end up evening the odds.
Moving along, “Born To Mack” sees rough housing dept collector Clint wanting to end his criminal career working for criminal Kingpin “The Man” and settle down with his pregnant wife when his past tragically catches up with him. But with his unborn child in critical condition what exactly does this bruiser have left to lose?
The final story sees us discover “The Legend Of Sleepy Floyd” as the titular (real life) basketball player plays the game of his life for the Golden State Warriors, the underlings of The Man are performing an audacious heist that’s sees them simultaneously rob the player’s houses while they’re at the game. But when Floyd’s mother, brother and girlfriend get home early, the bloody results drive the vengeful baller to launch into action after he gets a tip off. Gaining kickass murder powers from the weird, green glow that’s been giving other people enhanced abilities around town.
While Freaky Tales certainly lives up to its title, there’s a sense that filmmakering duo Boden and Fleck (responsible for the first Captain Marvel) just gathered up a bunch of unused, half thought out ideas that’s been sitting in unfinished manuscripts around their office and threw them into a single film just to get them out there. In actuality, the film is a deliriously camp ode to Oakland based from Bowden’s experiences growing up there in the 80s and as a result, the various stories contain references to may actual people, locations and happenings that occured at the time – although I’m fairly sure that green lightning and Sleepy Floyd going full Blade on a house full of neo-nazis wasn’t some of them. As expected, the film film is something of a mixed bag by design that refuses to stick to a single tone or genre in an attempt to deliver one of the enthusiastically ridiculous films of the year. However, your enjoyment may vary depending on just how freaky you like your tales to be.
Some stories are incredibly tongue in cheek and feature incredibly splatterly violence sees precious vital fluids spray across the screen with reckless abandon – others have virtually no stakes whatsoever and seem to have nothing to do with anything. Some performances are over stylised with 80s slang, others are more grounded, while others still are so overblown it veers on cartoonish (Ben Mendelsohn seems to be going for some sort of overacting award or something) and even though they are all fiendishly interlinked the utter randomness of it all will probably lose a hefty cross section of the audience along the way. Of course, considering that the directors are obviously going hell for leather to create a cult, midnight movie atmosphere, I don’t think that’s going to cause them to lose much sleep, especially since this blatently is a passion project for them.
Still, the onslaught of punk rock, rappers, neo-nazis, crime bosses and a basketball star tearing apart a crime den with Ninja weapons will certainly confound those desiring the conventional and while there are dozens of cute little moments connecting all the stories together, the script deliberately leaves other things frustratingly vague. Anyone actually hoping for an explanation for the weird glowing green items that seemingly imbue their holder to obtain higher powers, or the emerald lightning that crackles in the sky obviously haven’t seen that many cult films and other characters show up in stories with no explanation as to what happened between here and the last time we saw them, but anyone willing to let things like logic willfully slip through their fingers and just how with the flow might be surprised at how much fun they’re having.
It’s pretty evident that everyone on screen is having a ball, be it Pedro Pascal’s regret filled leg breaker, Ben Mendelsohn’s odious, ice cream slurping Kingpin or Normani and Dominique Thorn’s hungry rap artists and considering how many bizarro homages, references and moments Bowden & Fleck squeeze in, they’re obviously having a good time too either referencing the full body explosion from The Fury or having proud Oakland boy Tom Hanks cameo as a super intense video store clerk. However, while Freaky Tales is pushing hard for a party atmosphere, if there’s one thing the movie does more exuberantly than anything else is inflict as much bodily harm upon neo-nazis as as humanly possible. In fact, the movie is bookended with two huge, bloody action sequences that sees the racist group get their asses handed to them with gory gusto which obviously is gratifying to see.
However, while I’m usually a big fan of random and Freaky Tales nails that analogue, throwback tone 80s that’s still extremely popular, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched a film that been so enjoyable and yet so vaguely annoying and exactly the same time. Obviously, whack on an extra star if you spent you formative years in Oakland or if you’re empowered by green lightning…
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