Pedro Pascal in Freaky Tales

Filmmaking duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck return to cinemas with their first feature film since 2019’s Captain Marvel with the anthology film, Freaky Tales. A loosely connected set of four stories depicting convergent events on May 10, 1987, in Oakland, California. Freaky Tales is a love letter to the East Bay, to the Eighties, to B movies. 

The film is chaptered, with chapter one telling the story of counterculture’s age-old battle between punks and Neo Nazis. Lucid (Jack Champion) is a young punk with a crush on his friend, the devastatingly cool Tina (Ji-young Yoo). Their punk club—featuring performances from real punk bands Aphids! and Gulch—comes under attack by Neo Nazis, and Lucid, Tina, and their friends must decide what to do. It’s pretty easy: punch Nazis. This segment of the film has an undeniable flavor of The Warriors, and it’s a tight, kicky introduction to Freaky Tales.

Chapter two follows an aspiring rap duo called Danger Zone which includes Barbie (Dominique Thorne) and Entice (Normani, in her feature film acting debut). They cross paths with a racist, bullying cop referred to as “the guy” (Ben Mendelsohn), and later get into a rap battle against local hip hop star Too $hort (DeMario Symba Driver). The real Too $hort, a rapper who spent the Eighties in Oakland, appears as the guy’s beleaguered partner and also narrates the film.

Chapter three follows a local tough called Clint (Pedro Pascal), who collects debts for a mysterious crime boss. Clint is living his worst, and what he presumes is his last, day, and it is in his story that the breezy vibes of Freaky Tales take a turn for the darker. Following that, chapter four tells the tall tale of basketball star Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis), who goes on an unexpected journey of revenge. (Like Too $hort, the real Sleepy Floyd makes an appearance in the film.)

The characters are only tangentially related, what connects the segments of Freaky Tales is that everything happens on May 10, 1987, and there is a strange “green haze” seen around town that seems to be affecting things. Thus, the title, as “freaky” things happen, like the four urban legends recounted in the film. Each chapter of the film homages a B-movie genre, from teen rumbles to Blaxploitation to Kung Fu to mob flicks. The deep affection for these oft-cheesy genres, and for Oakland, does not get in the way of giving the film a realistic edge. A tacky neon ice cream shop is unexpectedly nostalgic—things used to be colorful, we used to be a society—but the floors are gross. Ditto for an old school diner, and a video store. There is an acknowledgment that things did not have to be perfect to be good.

But it’s the unreality of Freaky Tales that makes it fun. This is very much a film in which “the rule of cool” dominates. The green haze, for instance, is inconsistent, more often depicted as lightning or eyeball beams, but by the film’s halfway point, when the green starts flickering, you know something big is about to happen. Freaky Tales is thin on logic, but it just looks so COOL it doesn’t matter. This is a film that wants to take you on a ride, and if you let it, it’s a damn fun one. (The film tacitly acknowledges the rule of cool as multiple characters point out that it’s weird the grandpa in The Lost Boys didn’t ever warn anyone about the vampires, but if he did, the movie wouldn’t happen. The rule of cool states that sometimes you ignore logic in favor of a rad story being told.) 

There’s also a fun running bit about a new age-y cultish self-improvement system called “Psytropics”, of which Sleepy Floyd (the fake one) is a follower. At first, the Scientology vibes are unmistakable, but by the end, Psytropics seems like the kind of self-improvement you’d actually want to sign up for, which ends up being one of the film’s best jokes. Freaky Tales is a mix of comedy and drama, but when Boden/Fleck go for a joke, they land it. They also land some great action sequences, including a Kung Fu rampage that features A+ practical gore effects, the kind that look cheap but are still executed to perfection. Freaky Tales is made with maximal style and minimal substance, it’s held together by vibes and Pedro Pascal, and it’s a lot of fun if you let it work its slightly scummy magic. 

Freaky Tales is now playing exclusively in theaters.