REVIEW:
Freaky Tales was kind of cool, but also could have been a lot better. I like the idea of the movie more than the movie itself. That is to say, it’s a great title, and the premise seems like a fun time, as the movie promises to tell four crazy stories about young people in the 80s, that are all somehow connected. The only problem is, a whole bunch of these stories aren’t that “freaky,” or crazy at all. In fact, at least half of them are pretty generic.
The first story is about a punk rock scene that keeps getting attacked by skin heads. So the punk rockers decide to fight back. They load up on weapons, and there’s a one night brawl. That’s the end of that story. One can say it’s about young love, as two of the punk rock fans are into each other, but are more friends than anything else. Then when emotions run high, and everyone is on edge, they give in to temptation and get with each other. It’s more or less a gang vs gang fight story, and while nothing crazy happens, it’s still the second best story in the movie.
After that, we get the worst, or most basic story. It’s about two free-styling rap artists who work together as a tandem and get brought up on stage one night to take on a well-known rapper. That’s it. It’s basically just about a rap battle. These two women do prove themselves, and give a better performance than even they knew they could, but even still, there’s certainly nothing freaky about this story.
The third story isn’t much better. This is where the real celebrities of the movie come in. Pedro Pascal is up first. The third story is his story. He’s an enforcer or leg breaker for hire (like Rocky Balboa was before he became a fighter,) and he works for loan sharks, going after guys who haven’t paid off their debts. Only now he’s got a pregnant wife, and so he wants out. The problem is, he has crossed so many people already, that it’s not so easy for him to get out, and live a normal life. When someone whose father he killed comes after him, we get a sort of revenge story. It’s not that different than most revenge stories we’ve seen before.
And that leads us to our last story, where a basketball player’s house is robbed, and girlfriend is killed, and the basketball player comes after the killers with a vengeance. This is the only story of the four that is actually “freaky,” as the basketball player (played by Jay Ellis from Insecure and Top Gun: Maverick,) has some sort of supernatural powers, as he takes on room after room of goons, violently killing them all.
None of these stories is especially great. None of them are bad either. They are all just okay, with some being a little bit better than the others. The coolest thing about the movie has got to be the connections between them. The movie doesn’t go out of its way to make tons of connections, but it does have characters from each story spill into another story. And most of these payoff with cross overs that are relevant to the plot. The only exception is the story of the girl rap artists, whose only connection is that they are outside the same theater which starts out the punk rock story, and that the corrupt cop (played by Ben Mendleson, the other big actor in this movie,) makes an appearance at their ice cream store and harasses them a bit. But none of this has anything to do with the overall plot, and could have easily been scrapped. All other connections, woven throughout the film, however, are relevant and effective. It’s not a bad movie, but it could have been a whole lot better.