Freaky Tales is a weird, funny, violent, tragic look at life in Oakland, California, in the 1980s, loosely and wildly based on Ryan Fleck’s experiences and memories from that time. For reference sake, Fleck and Anna Boden are best known for directing Captain Marvel, Sugar and Half Nelson. But in this four-pack of interrelated stories, Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelshohn, and Tom Hanks elevate the acting and delivery of an opus to fighting for love and existence in the face of various forms of depression.
In the various narratives that Fleck and Boden have woven together, there’s a punk rock clique, a corrupt cop, a new father who is a trying to get out of the enforcement game, and a gang of white supremacists. There’s also a mysterious power that appears in different people in flashes, that seems to materialize in people who are facing some sort of oppression.
Without giving out too many details that impact the ending, it’s hard to say much more about Freaky Tales. It is engaging and intriguing, the kind of weird blend of funny, dramatic, and mysterious that should play well with fans of projects like Stranger Things. But it’s still not something that can be easily labeled or categorized. It can be said that each of the characters – and especially Mendelsohn’s cop and Pascal’s enforcer – are depicted as real enough to make us care, to see their flaws and motivations.
Ultimately, this proves to be a film about fighting for love and belonging, and the extents that we would go to get there. In a world that isn’t too far removed from 1980s Oakland, in terms of accepting other people for who they are and how they want to live, Freaky Tales has something to say.
