Lionsgate put Freaky Tales in theaters on Friday, April 4, 2025, more than a year after it first played at the Sundance Film Festival. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck wrote and directed it. IndieWire’s reviewer, who saw it at Sundance in January 2024, was not kind.
The film is an omnibus of four linked chapters set in 1987 Oakland, and the review called it a derivative nostalgia trip that winks at the audience more than it tells a story. Boden and Fleck came to it after directing 2019’s Captain Marvel. Before that they made smaller, character-driven films such as Half Nelson and Sugar. IndieWire said the new film carries over the Marvel habit of self-aware jokes.
Four chapters
The first, “The Gilman Strikes Back,” follows punk-rock pacifists, led by Jack Champion and Ji-young Yoo, who set out to take down a pack of Nazi skinheads. It is shot in the boxy Academy ratio, and the screen later widens. The reviewer found the fake cigarette burns, meant to mimic changing film reels, a cheap gimmick.
The second chapter, “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” centers on two aspiring rappers, Entice (Normani) and Barbie (Dominique Thorne), who work in an ice cream shop. A cop known only as The Guy, played by Ben Mendelsohn, harasses them on the eve of their big break. IndieWire described the character as a stand-in for hate and bigotry, and said the script gets laughs out of the audience’s disgust.
In “Born to Mack,” Pedro Pascal plays Clint, a criminal heavy taking one last job while his pregnant wife waits in the car. He believes he is only picking up videotapes. The job goes wrong, and Clint sets off after revenge. A cameo at the video store counter drew the reviewer’s scorn.
The last chapter, “The Legend of Sleepy Floyd,” stars Jay Ellis as Sleepy Floyd. It retells a Warriors-Lakers playoff game from May 1987 in which the real Eric “Sleepy” Floyd beat the Lakers with a record-breaking performance. IndieWire gave Ellis, who has worked in Insecure and Top Gun: Maverick, the film’s best showcase. The chapter then turns violent, ending in a bloodbath of revenge kills against the Nazis.
Psychic powers tie the stories together, shown as squiggles of green light. The reviewer called the effect cheap-looking.
The verdict in the headline of the review: a “miscalculated and smug” film that is not the return to form fans had hoped for.
