Movie Review: FREAKY TALES

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: April 4th, 2025 / 02:33 AM

Rating: R
Stars: Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis, Normani, Dominique Thorne, Jack Champion, Ji-young Yoo, Angus Cloud, Keir Gilchrist, Michelle Farrah Huang, Jordan Gomes, Demario “Symba” Driver, Too $hort, Eric “Sleepy” Floyd, Natalia Dominquez
Writers: Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
Directors: Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
Distributor: Lionsgate
Release Date: April 4, 2025

FREAKY TALES has images marked by video tape striations, part of its effort to set the mood and the place. We’re in 1987 Oakland, where things are about to indeed get freaky.

Directed and written by Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, FREAKY TALES is broken into four chapters, plus a brief opener, a humorous mid-end credits outtake, and a music video from one of the film’s bands.

The stories are interconnected, with narration from rapper Too $hort, who also appears here as an actor. Some of the more unlikely bits are “explained” by a strange, possibly alien green glow, though none of the episodes are science fiction. We also get some underground comics-style animation. In short, there’s a lot going on here.

After a commercial for Sleepy Floyd’s Learning Center, sponsored by Psytopics, we’re in “Chapter 1: Strength in Numbers (aka The Gilman Strikes Back).” When crowd-surfing at a punk club is broken up by skinheads, and the band members and audience are attacked, it doesn’t take long for resistance to form. Young adults Lucid (Jack Champion) and Tina (Ji-young Yoo) are drawn together by their mutual enthusiasm for combatting bullies.

“Chapter 2: Don’t Fight the Feeling” finds two young Black ice cream store employees, optimistic Entice (Normani) and cranky Barbie (Dominique Thorne), joining forces as the duo Danger Zone and debating whether they should enter a rap battle.

“Chapter 3: Born to Mack” underscores FREAKY TALES’s Tarantino-esque aspirations. It is also the most entwined of all the segments. Pedro Pascal stars as Clint, a paid enforcer who’s got one last job that he profoundly doesn’t want to do. Part of his current gig entails going to a video store, where the clerk is played by someone not shown in the trailer, so it won’t be spoiled here. For those who love meta-movie banter, it’s outstanding.

Finally, “Chapter 4: The Legend of Sleepy Floyd” posits real-life basketball champion Eric Augustus “Sleepy” Floyd (played at his 1987 age by Jay Ellis, with the real Floyd showing up in the Psytropics ads) as a Nazi-decimating ninja.

FREAKY TALES has a loopy, frisky energy that delights in comic book scenarios. It has a youthful optimism that feels aptly ‘80s, though it shares screen space between actual young people and more seasoned performers like Pascal, who is excellent, and Ben Mendelsohn, who is effortlessly malicious as the most powerful of the baddies.

FREAKY TALES gets its righteous gore on and loves its dialogue exchanges. If it sometimes seems cartoonish, it’s aware of this (hence the animation).

In all its forms and scenarios, the message running through FREAKY TALES is to not shut up or sit down in the face of verbal or violent oppression. It’s fun agitprop pop, with some glorious guest spots.

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